


isn't this the vision that you wanted

by nebulastucky



Series: vision [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Badass Katara (Avatar), Coming Out, Fire Nation Politics (Avatar), Friends to Lovers, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Internalized Homophobia, Katara & Zuko (Avatar) Friendship, M/M, Matchmaking, Meddling, Pining, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Swordfighting, Title from a Carly Rae Jepsen Song, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, and the inherent homoeroticism thereof, because theres nothing more badass than loving your friends, idiots to lovers, marvelous adventures of firelord zuko and ambassador sokka, obsessed w the fact thats a real tag, thinly-veiled anti-military propaganda from the author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25244626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulastucky/pseuds/nebulastucky
Summary: Firelord Zuko - ender of the Hundred Year War, ruler of the Fire Nation, payer of respects and reparations - takes advice and counsel from representatives of every nation, division, and specialty.But teenage boy Zuko - friend of turtleducks, wielder of fun looking swords, stumbler over words and feet in the presence of cute boys - only listens to two people, and they are conspiring together to ruin him.or: Iroh just wants what's best for his nephew, and Katara just wants to know everyone's business.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: vision [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904806
Comments: 450
Kudos: 2183
Collections: A:tla, AtLA <50k fics to read, Zukka





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> big shoutout as always to my loves carla, ella and emily for helping me workshop this idea and being generally swell gals 
> 
> title from carly rae jepsen's the sound

Zuko misses the open sea.

He misses having a single goal and - more or less - total control over how his days are spent. He misses the freedom to choose, even though he never really felt like he had it at the time. He misses the solitude, the privacy, and being able to trust everyone around him.

And, as he sits through yet another presentation on trade infrastructure in an Earth Kingdom village he’s never heard of, he misses only having to listen to his uncle.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about every meeting and council and court he attends, he does. It’s his job to care. Every meeting and council and court is important; every meeting and council and court effects countless lives in countless villages across the world. Every decision and ruling is crucial, and could mean life or death for some of the citizens whose livelihoods depend on the right one being made.

Zuko just wishes they weren’t so _boring._

He hates himself for thinking it, because he knows each of these meetings is necessary for establishing healthy relationships with the other nations - something the Fire Nation hasn’t had for a century - now that the war is over. But he knows, no matter how much he pushes himself to pay attention and absorb every drop of information, there is only so much he can handle.

He misses not being overwhelmed every second of his life.

His eyes slide from Councilman Hei’s passionately dull speech to Sokka, halfway down the other side of the table, only to find him supporting the weight of his head on a fist pressed to his cheek. Sokka’s eyes droop further with every word from the Councilman’s mouth, and Zuko nearly laughs. 

Sokka could pass, maybe, for having his eyes cast onto the notes in front of him. Some of the others in the room might be convinced by that act, but Zuko knows him far too well to fall for it. No, Zuko thinks as he watches Sokka pretend to fight off the drowsiness that comes with a meeting like this one, there’s no fooling him.

Except that there is, but he’s a different kind of fool when it comes to Sokka.

“Councilman Hei,” Zuko says in the politician’s voice he still finds too big for him, “if I might interrupt?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zuko sees Sokka jerk awake at the break in monotony. He manages to suppress the smile that wants to rise up in his features.

“Of course, Firelord Zuko,” Councilman Hei says. Zuko doesn’t need to look at Sokka to know his eyes are rolling like the tide.

“It’s been a long day. I’m sure many of us haven’t eaten since breakfast which, for some of us - myself included - was quite some time ago. I suggest we table this discussion and reconvene at a later date. Those in favour?”

Several _ayes_ rise from around the room, some more enthusiastic than others, and with them the bodies of their owners.

“Thank you for your time, Councilman Hei,” Zuko says. Then, to Sokka’s stretching form with a smile he can’t fight back, “Ambassador, would you walk with me?”

Sokka, his arms sagging back down to his sides and an easy grin on his face, replies, “It would be my sincere honour, Firelord Zuko.”

Sokka strides across the room to meet him, purposeful and confident in a way that always sends a thrill up Zuko’s spine, and manages to keep his composure and a respectful distance until they reach the other side of the impressive doors that seal the council chambers off from the rest of the palace. Once the doors are shut behind them, though, Sokka slings an arm around Zuko’s shoulders and all but collapses against him.

“Do you know if Councilman Hei is married?” Sokka asks.

Zuko thinks for a moment. “He has a wife, I'm pretty sure.”

“Poor gal,” Sokka says, and Zuko lets himself laugh. For a second, it’s just the two of them in the whole world, and they’re not the Firelord and the Ambassador to the Southern Water Tribe. They’re just boys - young men with elastic smiles and boundless energy, but only for nonsense.

Sokka laughs with him, and Zuko thinks that’s what he misses most. 

All the other things - the freedom of the sea, the independence of being first in command, the urgency of a mission - disappear when he’s not thinking about them, but this. This. The sound of Sokka’s joy, loud in his ear. Zuko wishes he could hear it every second of the day.

“Are you coming to dinner tonight?” Sokka asks. There’s a wry sort of hope in his voice, like he knows the answer already and exactly how to change it.

“You know I have all that legislation and documentation to look over -”

“I think the wait staff miss you,” Sokka says. “None of the other guys are as nice to them as you are. They’re not as nice to _me_ as you are,either, and I’m supposed to be one of them.”

Zuko feels his blood start to simmer. “Did someone say something to you? I’ll -”

“No! Well, yes, but in his defense I don’t think he was born with a sense of humour.”

Zuko narrows his eyes at him. “What did you _do_?”

“That’s not important.” Sokka gives him a pleading look, and Zuko can already feel his resolve turning to ash. “Come to dinner. You can’t live on fire flakes alone - and I need someone to laugh at my jokes.”

“Your jokes aren’t funny.”

“But you always laugh. And that’s all I need.”

“You’re an idiot,” Zuko says. “Why did I hire you?”

“Because I make up the one key demographic that keeps your cabinet from being ridiculed for its lack of diversity.”

They turn a corner, into a wide courtyard bathed in late evening sun. Sokka drops his arm from Zuko’s shoulder to scale a rock and bask in the light. Zuko tries not to mourn the loss of contact.

Zuko looks up at him, glowing inside and out, and has to fight to keep his voice level. “And what demographic is that?”

“Eye candy,” Sokka says, with a wink that stirs something an awful lot like hunger in Zuko’s gut. “So are you coming to dinner or not?”

Zuko thinks about the stacks of papers in his study, all begging for his attention or signature or both. Then he looks at Sokka again, simply asking politely, and he knows it’s no contest. It never was.

There are appearances to keep up, though, so Zuko sighs before he says “Yeah. Okay, I’ll go.”

The smile Sokka gives him lights Zuko up on the inside and lets him know - like he could forget - just how bad he’s got it.

* * *

The Jasmine Dragon hasn’t changed a bit in the months since Zuko’s last visit. Every seat at every table is filled, and the small crowd of people in the plaza outside isn’t there for sightseeing. They make way as he approaches the shop - though he’d really prefer to wait in line with them - and some even bow as he passes them. Zuko’s cheeks flare as he nods respectfully back at them. He wonders if he’ll ever be used to the fanfare, and suspects not.

He says to his guards, “I’ll be here all day. You’re free to see the city, I won’t need protecting here.”

There’s hesitation in the way they bow to him, but Zuko knows at least two of them have been dying to see the University library. They leave, and Zuko feels anxiety tighten in the pit of his stomach at the same time as his shoulders loosen.

Iroh greets him at the door, and Zuko has never felt safer.

“Firelord Zuko,” Iroh bows to him, laughter in every fibre of his being, “we are honoured to receive you at the Jasmine Dragon. To what do we owe this pleasure?”

Zuko’s face cracks into the easiest smile of his life. “Uncle. We talked about this.”

Iroh comes up from his bow, and drags Zuko down into his arms. He hugs fiercely, as he always has, and Zuko feels full to bursting with fondness, as he always does.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” Iroh says, once he releases his hold. 

“I’m not here officially,” Zuko tells him. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Good.” Iroh pats his cheek, and slips an apron over his head. “We’re swamped.”

This is how all of Zuko’s visits to his uncle go: he arrives unannounced to avoid as much of the pomp and circumstance as he can, he wears the same apron he wore when they first opened this little shop, and he spends an afternoon serving tea and washing dishes while customers gawk at the Firelord in a server’s uniform.

The only difference this time, is that the shop closes up an hour earlier than usual for cleanup after what turns out to be a spectacular trading day. The doors are closed, the rest of the staff have gone home, and the sun is sinking down low by the time Zuko has his first cup of tea.

He hums at the taste of jasmine, letting the flavour and the heat and the steam bombard each of his senses. He closes his eyes as he sips, and lets the knowledge of his uncle’s smile across the table wash over him.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to set up shop at the palace?” Zuko asks when he comes back to the room. “The cooks are wonderful and they try their very best - but no one makes tea like you do, Uncle.”

“Quite sure,” Iroh chuckles, and _oh,_ how Zuko has missed that sound. “Why are you here, Nephew? You are always welcome, of course, and I cannot say I dislike the business you bring to the shop - but why are you here?”

Zuko frowns at him. “Can’t I just want to visit my uncle?”

“You can. The Firelord cannot.”

“I -” Zuko starts, then stops himself. He doesn’t like to lie, and especially not to Uncle. He tries again, “I needed a break. Some time away, to clear my head.”

Iroh peers at him, the cup in his large hands almost comically small. “Is your head cluttered, Nephew?”

Zuko doesn’t know if he would call it _clutter._ His mind is occupied almost every minute of the day with thoughts of budgets and policies, lives and deaths, responsibilities and requests. He _knows_ those are important, and can’t go without consideration.

But his spare minutes, his quiet moments with no one calling upon him for answers to problems he cannot yet hope to solve, those thoughts are spent somewhere else entirely. Those thoughts are wrapped in smooth brown skin and uproarious laughter, shining blue eyes and devilish smiles, the lingering heat of a look and the scandalous potential of a touch - and Zuko finds himself excusing more and more minutes as _spare._

Being around Sokka is worse, of course, because he is not faced with the blurriness of a memory but the real thing, bold and brazen in the flesh. It’s a terrible position Zuko is in: if he spends too long in Sokka’s presence he starts to lose his mind at every casual touch and locking of eyes, but too long apart and there comes an all too real ache in every part of him.

“There’s a lot going on at home,” Zuko says finally. “It can be overwhelming.”

“You are allowed to feel overwhelmed, Zuko. I would be worried if you weren’t.”

“How can I keep myself from - from being crushed under the weight of it all?”

“Know that there is only so much you can do. There is only so much you can control, and far less that you _should_ control. Sometimes these things find a way to work themselves out. It can be difficult to know when to let go, but sometimes it is best to allow things to happen as they happen. There is no use in worrying over every potential outcome, when only one can happen at a time.

“Yours is not a job meant for such a young man,” Iroh tells him. “You have so much heart, Nephew. Do not let it be broken.”

Zuko eyes him as he says this last part, suspicious of how specific it is. “You’re talking about being the Firelord, right?”

“Of course,” Iroh says, flashing him a good-natured smile. “Unless there’s something else, perhaps something of a more personal -”

“No,” Zuko says. It comes out too hastily, too eagerly, to really be believed.

Iroh looks at him with that ever-present knowing gleam to his eye. “Nephew, you must never be ashamed to _feel._ It is what makes you human, and what sets your reign apart from your father’s, and his father before him. You must not let your emotions rule you, Zuko, but you must also not try to rule your emotions. That is a losing battle.”

Zuko gets the feeling that his uncle knows more than he’s letting on. He considers, for a moment, dropping the pretense and putting everything in the open. There might be some real insight to be gained here, something concrete instead of the vague wisdom Zuko has heard from his uncle for years now. 

But, as always, there’s no way to know how a confession like the one that burns on the tip of his tongue will be received. 

“But what if,” Zuko starts, tentative. “What if it goes wrong? What if I let whatever happens happen, and what happens isn’t what I want?”

Iroh laughs at him. “You worry too much, my boy. You need to learn how to just _be._ ”

On the journey home from Ba Sing Se, Zuko thinks about just _being_. 

He tries it, briefly, on the deck of the ship, surrounded by his men. There are no dangers on the open ocean now that the war is over, so his men take the opportunity to spar, practice their bending under each other’s scrutiny, and generally let loose - as loose as they can, that is, with the Firelord only a few feet away.

Zuko’s excursion into _being_ is short lived. He watches his crew - he refuses to call them soldiers, though that’s what they are - absently, giving himself permission to exist in that moment and not worry about the mess that is surely waiting for him back at the palace. His eyes track two guards, no longer in their armour but training garments he tries not to think of as _skimpy,_ and his mind - _ahem_ \- wanders. It wanders to their exposed arms, the gruff shadow of facial hair along each of their jaws, the masculine lines of their bodies as they move swiftly through firebending forms.

He excuses himself to his quarters when he notices his mind has wandered even further than his eyes, and resolves not to try _just being_ again until he is safe in the company of his very elderly council members.

* * *

There has never been much room in Zuko’s life for just _letting things happen._ For so long his life has been a neverending list of rigid rules and expectations, his own feelings and reactions planned for him by the fact of his royalty. For so long, deviation from the plan has been a crime punishable by - well. He knows the punishment. Suffice to say, surprises generally don’t go down all that well.

His uncle’s advice seems to call for a little spontaneity though, and in the spirit of _living in the moment_ or whatever it is he’s supposed to do, Zuko lets his guard down and wears his glee plain on his face at the sight of Sokka waiting to meet their ship at the docks.

Sokka matches him with a grin of his own and falls into step beside him for the long march back to the palace. “You’re awfully cheerful for someone who’s about to be _late_ for a meeting with General Hong. Did serving tea to mean customers make you miss home that much?”

Zuko’s face heats up, and he forces himself not to struggle against it. “Something like that.”

Sokka huffs a short laugh and claps him on the shoulder. Behind them, one of the royal guards clears his throat in a way that would be menacing if it weren’t for Sokka’s responding eyeroll. 

His hand slides down Zuko’s arm and grips his wrist, tugging him along further ahead of their company. Zuko stumbles after him, unable to focus on anything but the almost sharp feeling of skin on skin, however chaste it may be. 

“C’mon,” Sokka says. He looks back at Zuko over his shoulder and there’s a laugh in his eyes, likely in response to Zuko’s no doubt dumbstruck expression. “You don’t want to keep the General waiting, do you?”

Maybe this is what Uncle meant when he said just to _be._ There’s none of Zuko’s usual terror of doing something wrong in this moment, just Sokka’s fingers around his wrist and the blinding light of his smile.

“Hong?” Zuko says. “I think I could stand not to see him for a little longer.”

“Can I come to the meeting?” Sokka twists so he can face Zuko properly, but does not let go of him. Zuko’s heart pounds, awkward and too big in his chest.

“Sokka, it’s -”

“Not my jurisdiction, I know, but I - it’s been forever since we spent any time together. I missed you.”

Zuko nearly falls on his face. “I was barely gone for a week.”

“You know how it is in this place, Zuko, that’s practically a _year._ Let me come to the meeting.”

“It’s a military budget meeting, Sokka. With General Hong. Who very much wishes we were still at war.”

“Which is _exactly_ why having a representative from a Tribe almost entirely wiped out by the war will be more fun. Let me come to the meeting. I’ll cut the runtime in half just by being there, and then you can teach me how to use your dao swords.”

Sokka’s hand is so close to his still, and Zuko wants so badly to brave that last inch of space and hold it. He doesn’t. His uncle’s words ring in his ears. _You worry too much._

“Hong will be furious,” Zuko says. He imagines the look on Hong’s face when he greets him with the Ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe at his side, and realises he’s been coming at this proposal from the wrong angle.

“Hong is always furious,” Sokka says. “Can I come?”

Zuko sighs. “Yeah. You can come. Just don’t get yourself fired. I don’t want to have to hire your father. Or worse, Katara.”

“Do people ever ask you why you didn’t give the job to Dad in the first place?”

They reach the palace steps, and Sokka is still walking backwards. He trips before Zuko can warn him, and releases Zuko’s hand to preserve the shape of his nose. He regains his footing, just barely, after falling up for longer than should really be possible.

“Never,” Zuko says.

* * *

General Hong is furious, but General Hong is always furious. 

Zuko had never met him before taking the throne, so it’s difficult to know whether his rage is a natural part of who he is, or if it is a product of the circumstances in which he finds himself. Today, Zuko thinks it may be the latter.

“My sincerest apologies for the wait, General Hong,” Zuko professes. Sokka catches a subtle elbow to the ribs for his snickering.

“No trouble at all, Firelord Zuko,” Hong says, though it is clearly a lie. He bows to Zuko and only Zuko, distaste rolling off him in waves. 

“Ambassador Sokka will be joining us today,” Zuko says, and takes his seat at the head of a table far too big for the three of them. “I’m sure you will find his insight on this matter invaluable.”

Sokka settles down at his side, close enough that Zuko starts to rethink this arrangement. Sokka smiles at him then, a sneaky thing, and he knows it means trouble.

Hong is hesitant as he sits. “Your Highness, I really must ob-”

“Excellent, I knew you would understand, General,” Zuko says. “What news of your troops in the coastal Earth Kingdom towns? Have they all returned home?”

“Home? Why would they be home?”

Zuko can feel Sokka getting riled up beside him, so he puts on his most humourless smile for the General. “Because I ordered them home when I ended the war, General Hong.”

“With all due respect, they are soldiers. They exist to monitor and eradicate threats, and -”

“Until recently, General, if you’ll excuse my interruption,” Sokka says, his voice a polite snakebite, “the only threat to the people of the Earth Kingdom was the invading Fire Nation. I don’t think that’s as much of a worry these days, given that the war is _over._ ”

Zuko looks at him, expecting the bitterness of his words to be shown in his face as well. Instead, Sokka is the picture of composure, his expression cool and even - though Zuko can tell from the specific curve of his back that he is no more than two comments from the General away from leaping across the table at him.

“The truth,” Sokka continues, and Zuko can’t help but stop his own words before they’ve begun, “is that ending the war is an important step towards peace, but until the people on the ground - the civilians, the innocents, the bystanders - see the practical effects of it, they won’t believe or trust it. You cannot hope to get these people on your side if the men that burned their towns still roam the ashes.”

Zuko watches Sokka as he keeps going, into histories and anecdotes and evidence, and wonders when his best friend got so good at this. When did Sokka go from flying a maximum security prison break by the seat of his pants to _this?_

“Firelord Zuko, have you nothing to say?” Hong demands, dragging Zuko out of his musings. “This is -”

“General Hong,” Zuko says, surprised by his own exhaustion with his General, “if you are about to say the word _insubordination,_ I ask you to save your breath, as I have heard it from you far too many times for it to still have any meaning.”

Hong’s face goes a shocking red, and his fist slams on the table. “You _cannot_ speak to me in that -”

“I am the Firelord, General,” Zuko says, and he’s moved past exhaustion into boredom now, “so I think it’s within my power to speak to you however I please, given that your job depends on my thinking you are fit for it.”

Hong balks at him. Zuko does his level best to ignore the struggle beside him involving Sokka and the laugh he’s trying to subdue.

“Ambassador Sokka hasn’t said anything untrue or disagreeable to my mind, which is why I did not interrupt him. If you took his experience and understanding of the plight of the invaded people as a personal attack, General, I believe that would be _your_ problem.”

Hong stands, abrupt and apparently without intention. He seems surprised to be on his feet so suddenly, but settles into a stance that might have been intimidating on a man thirty years younger.

“You are a child,” he says, and Zuko wonders if he sees the irony in that, “and I will not be spoken down to by you. You will never be the Firelord your father was.”

“I don’t intend to be,” Zuko says. This is the last straw, it seems, because Hong storms from the table to the impressive doors at the end of the hall. He is stopped by two guards, awaiting the Firelord’s approval to release him.

Hong turns and stares at Zuko, and Zuko stares back.

“Take your troops out of the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko tells him. “Let them see their families. Let them find new purpose. Then come and see me about your job security.”

Zuko nods to the doormen, and they set the steaming General free. He takes all the tension in the room with him.

At Zuko’s side, Sokka says low and right in his ear, “Do you think anyone’s ever told him that storming out isn’t as effective if he does it every meeting?”

Zuko buries his face in his hands and groans, “I have to find someone to replace that guy. I _can’t_ have him in charge of - of _anything._ ” He looks up again, at Sokka. “How do I make someone retire?”

“Isn’t that just firing him?”

Zuko groans again. “I can’t fire him just because he disagrees with me, that’s the kind of thing my father would do.”

“Usually, yeah,” Sokka reasons, “but this disagreement is about what _the war is over_ means. So I don’t think anyone would blame you for wanting everyone on the same page about that. Especially the guy in charge of the army.”

"I _guess,_ but -"

"Also, your bastard father wouldn't fire him. He'd _agree_ with him. Which is exactly how you know you're in the right here."

Zuko, still hunched over the table, sighs and looks up at Sokka. “How are you so good at that?”

“At what?”

“Talking,” Zuko gestures vaguely. “You always know the right thing to say to me.”

“My best friends are literally the most powerful benders in the world,” Sokka says, “and I have a boomerang. My combat skill set isn’t always useful - so I learned to talk. Turns out a lot of problems can be solved that way. There’s also my natural charm, that’s a big part of it too.”

“Do you want my job? You can have it. You’d be better at it than I am.”

“I don’t think the Fire Nation would approve of some _guy_ from the Water Tribe becoming Firelord. I also don’t think my dad would appreciate no longer having a successor as chief of the tribe.”

Zuko frowns. “You’d get to boss me around.”

“I already do that.”

“I wouldn’t be able to have you thrown in the dungeons with my father for it if _you_ were the Firelord, though.”

Something like fire ignites in Sokka’s eyes. “I would _love_ to be thrown in the dungeons with your father.”

Zuko sighs again. “And that’s why you can’t be Firelord. You’re too dangerous.”

“Among other reasons,” Sokka says. “I’m pretty sure I’d have to marry you to even make it into the line for the throne.”

Zuko nearly chokes. He tries to cover it up with a cough, but he’s not sure how convincing it is. “What?”

“Not that that would be a problem,” Sokka continues, and Zuko starts to get the impression he’s just thinking out loud now. “But. You know. Buy me dinner first.”

“Buy you dinner.” Zuko forces himself to keep eye contact with Sokka, because if he catches sight of any of the rest of him right now, he’s not sure how he’ll react.

Sokka shrugs, and sets his face with that casual grin of his that does funny things to Zuko’s motor function at the best of times. “I want to be wooed.”

 _He wants to be wooed,_ Zuko thinks. _He wants to be wooed. You worry too much. He wants to be wooed._

“Do you want to go spar?” is what comes out of his mouth.

Sokka flashes him that smile again, sweet like spring, and says, “I thought you’d never ask.”


	2. Chapter 2

_ To the most esteemed Firelord Zuko, and Sokka reading this over his shoulder, _

_ I hope this message finds you well and without too much of the world on your shoulders. Aang has Avatar business on the eastern Fire Nation islands, so we’ll be staying in Shu Jing for a while until he’s finished. Yes, we know we are welcome to stay at the palace with you - but I thought this arrangement might afford you the opportunity of a little break. If you can find the time in your busy and important schedules, please come pay us a visit. I miss my brothers. _

_ Love, _

_ Katara _

* * *

It takes a great deal of shuffling around and a full day of back to back meetings that leave Zuko wanting to tear his hair out, but they manage to block five days free to go to Shu Jing. Travel time means they only get to have the middle three days there, but it’s more than nothing, and that is all Zuko needs.

He asks specifically for a small boat to take them to the island but, scowling from the dock at what must be a repurposed naval ship, he’s starting to learn that just because the Firelord asks does not mean the Firelord gets.

Sokka claps him on the shoulder as he saunters past toward the ship. “You coming or what, hotman?”

Zuko tries not to storm as he makes his way up the gangplank. “This isn’t the boat I wanted.”

“You really thought they were going to give the Firelord a paddleboat?”

“No,” Zuko sighs. “I’d just hoped for something a little more -”

He waves his hands vaguely, grasping for any word other than  _ intimate. _ It rings in his ears and knocks against his skull, because he knows it to be true. There are too many places to hide on a ship this size, and that’s not what he wants to do anymore. At least, what he thinks he wants.

“Subtle?” Sokka offers, and Zuko accepts it, because it’s just that bit easier than the truth.

Something smacks the back of Zuko’s leg as Sokka slips past behind him onto the ship.

“You’re bringing your sword?” Zuko frowns at him and fights the urge to rub at his calf. There’s sure to be a bruise there given that a soft sword isn’t exactly useful, but he doesn’t want to tip Sokka off that he’s hurt - however slightly - if he doesn’t have to.

“Of course,” Sokka says. “Piandao is back on Shu Jing since the war ended and the White Lotus went back underground. I want to show him what I’ve learned from his favourite student.”

Zuko looks down at his shoes, as if that will hide the flush of red in his cheeks. “I don’t know about that -”

“Firelord Zuko, Ambassador Sokka,” a guard - sailor? soldier? These uniforms all look the same - bows to each of them and extends a hand toward a set of stairs leading down to the bowels of the ship. “Your quarters are ready, if you would like to follow me.”

“Yes,” Zuko says, too fast to sound real. Anything is better than having to endure the furious blushing that comes with Sokka’s niceness. 

The ship leaves the dock the moment they begin their descent. Another guard meets them at the foot of the stairs, and drags their escort a few steps away for a tense whispered conversation.

Zuko has always been taught that eavesdropping is impolite - but he has also learned that it can be foolish not to. He doesn’t catch everything, because so much of the discussion seems to be serious and exaggerated eye contact, so he leans closer to Sokka in front of him.

“What are they saying?” he whispers. 

Sokka shushes him, waves him away. He puts on the worst show of  _ not _ eavesdropping that Zuko has ever seen.

Zuko hears a hushed,  _ “You owe me big for this,” _ from one of the guards, and then the newcomer scurries off in search of a new way to make himself useful. Their escort gestures to Zuko and Sokka to keep walking with him down a hallway.

“There’s been a -” The guard pauses for a second, and Zuko gets the impression he’s struggling with a delicate thought. Then, “A miscalculation.”

“What do you mean, a miscalculation?” Zuko lets a little bit of authority into his voice, but tries not to make it sound like a demand.

“I’m afraid we have more crew members than originally expected, sir. We’ve had to double up in some cabins.”

Zuko asks, “How many cabins?” as if that will change the answer he already knows is coming.

“All of them, sir. Including yours and Ambassador Sokka’s.”

“I don’t understand,” Sokka says. “I thought we were sharing a room anyway?”

“You were,” the guard says, and brings them to a halt at a cabin door, “but certain - ah -  _ resources _ had to be reallocated to accommodate the, um,  _ excess, _ so now -”

He fiddles with the key and the door to the cabin swings open and -

“There’s one bed,” Zuko says, even though it doesn’t need saying. So much for places to hide.

Sokka breezes on into the room as if nothing is wrong, and Zuko thinks, maybe nothing  _ is _ wrong. Maybe he can be a normal person for a couple of nights and this won’t be a problem. Maybe it’ll be fine.

* * *

It is not fine.

This isn’t the first time they’ve shared a room. This isn’t even the first time they’ve shared a bed - Zuko can’t count how many times he’s fallen asleep at his desk only to wake under soft sheets with Sokka snoring gently beside him. 

This is, though, the first time they’ve shared on purpose.

And it is on purpose, because they both know the crew would build another bed from scratch if Zuko commanded it. He could evict any one of the crew from their bed and take it from them with only a wave of his hand. The thought does occur to him, as they go about their business during the day, but once the sun starts to sink below the horizon and Zuko hasn’t done anything about the situation, he realises it’s because he doesn’t want to.

He recognises the inhumanity of forcing one of his men to give up his sleep for the duration of their trip, and that’s surely the reason he’ll give if asked, but in truth he doesn’t want to find a way out of this. He knows how he feels, and he knows this might be worse for him in the long run, but he’s always been glad to bear whatever consequences he must.

Mostly, though, he just wants to  _ know. _ He wants to know what it’s like to lie down next to Sokka and be wrapped in the vulnerability of sleep. He wants to know what it’s like to go through the motions of bedtime with Sokka. He wants to know the soft sound of disgruntlement Sokka will make when Zuko disturbs him to rise with the sun.

He wants to know every part of it.

So, Zuko decides as the first few of his men bow to him when they turn in for the night, he will learn.

The last rays of the sunset disappear into the inky night sky, and Zuko finds Sokka at the bow, his eyes cast up to the stars.

“We don’t get to see them like this in the capital,” Zuko says, looking up. “There’s too much light there. They get lost in it.”

“This is nothing,” Sokka tells him. “At the South Pole, we get this times a hundred. Thousands and thousands of stars, more than you can even imagine. So many it’s like it’s not even dark.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Zuko says, and he’s not looking at the sky anymore. “Do you miss it?”

Sokka doesn’t answer him. Instead, he tears his gaze back down to Earth and looks Zuko in the eye. He says, “You should see it. We should - let me take you. Let me take you to see the stars the way they’re meant to be seen.”

There’s something like awe in his voice, and something like desperation in his face. He is so close, Zuko realises, that the hair of his bare arms stands to attention in anticipation of contact. This moment could not be more intimate if they were on the world’s smallest rowboat.

“Okay,” Zuko says, and it sticks to his throat. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

They’re quiet for a moment, just looking at each other, until Sokka asks, “Did you want something?”

“I wanted, um,” Zuko wants so many things. So many things he is afraid to have, afraid to ask for. He knows they will tear him apart if he isn’t careful. “I wanted to let you know I’m heading to bed.”

“Oh,” Sokka says, and it feels like a spell has been broken, “okay. I’ll be there soon.”

“Do you want me to wait up?” Hope bleeds into his voice, as much as he tries to stop it.

“Yeah,” Sokka smiles, “I mean, how many opportunities does a guy get to have a slumber party with the Firelord?”

“You’re not braiding my hair.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Sokka’s tone sends a rush of blood to Zuko’s cheeks, and he can feel it coming a mile off, so he turns on his heel and tries not to float on his way down the stairs to their cabin.

The bed taunts him as he dresses for sleep. It laughs at him for his wishes and wants, tricks his fragile hope into being fear. It calls him a fool for having any of them to begin with.

The sheets are smooth and fine, but they grate against his skin as he undoes the militaristic tucking and climbs in. He is the only person in the room, and he feels like an intruder. Curiously, though, being alone in a bed too wide for just one doesn’t feel entirely wrong.

By the time Sokka slides into the room a while later, Zuko’s mood has soured almost completely. He starts to undress, and Zuko rolls over to face away from him, embarrassment rising in him like poison. 

The mattress dips as Sokka slips in beside him. Zuko rolls again onto his back, and tries not to feel Sokka’s eyes on him.

“Do we know what Aang’s Avatar business is?” Sokka yawns around his question.

“Katara didn’t say,” Zuko says to the ceiling. “I’m sure we’ll find out when we get there.”

“I hope it’s not anything to do with the Spirit World, I’ve had enough of that place to last me a lifetime.”

“I imagine the feeling’s mutual.”

Sokka smacks him lightly on the shoulder. His hand lingers there a moment, long enough for Zuko to reunite with his old friend hope. Hope for what he doesn’t know, but he feels it anyway, settling in between his ribs. Filling up all the empty spaces carved out by his shame.

It feels good, to know that this arrangement - predicament, problem, crisis - doesn’t change anything about them, at least not immediately. Every other time they have shared a bed, Zuko has woken up fearful of being discovered, either by guards or Sokka himself, but this time - this time is different. This time, he’s not afraid.

He feels safe. And he doesn’t have a single idea what to do with that.

Sokka’s breathing starts to even out, and Zuko grasps at the comfort that brings him like a drowning man at a straw. 

“G’night, Zuko,” Sokka says into his pillow. He hugs it where his face isn’t buried in it, and something in Zuko aches unabashedly to take its place.

Quiet hangs in the air around them like fog, and a confession burns on Zuko’s tongue. It would be so easy just to say it - Sokka is most of the way asleep already, he might not even hear it - but then Sokka yawns, a long, drawn out thing, and Zuko’s thoughts fizzle.

“Goodnight, Sokka,” Zuko says. He tenses his jaw shut to keep himself from saying anything else. 

He extinguishes the light of the lamp beside him and stares at the blackness that was once the ceiling for a very long time. He doesn’t think.

The fire in Zuko’s veins means he rises with the sun, whether he can see it or not. He doesn’t know when he fell asleep or how long he’s been out, but his eyes fly open at the break of dawn. 

His morning routine is simple and smooth: he wakes with the red rays of the sunrise, dresses comfortably while tea brews in the old pot his uncle gave him, and finds somewhere quiet to watch the sky turn blue. It sets him up for the day and it’s something he can do no matter where he is, and he doesn’t like to disturb it.

This morning, it is disturbed.

Zuko wakes, comfortable and inexplicably serene, with something tickling at his collarbone. Still bleary from sleep, it takes him a moment to realise the  _ something _ is Sokka’s slow, even puffs of breath. From there he’s quick to notice the weight across his waist is Sokka’s arm, almost possessive in its embrace, and the insistent warmth pressed to his side is Sokka’s body.

Zuko tenses, and Sokka’s breath hitches a moment before evening out again as he presses closer, closer, closer. His face presses into the exposed skin of Zuko’s neck, and Zuko has to wonder if he can feel the way his pulse quickens.

The way he sees it, there are two options.

Option one: Zuko can find a way to extract himself from Sokka’s grasp and go about his day like nothing happened, and be haunted by the fact that he  _ knows  _ now. He  _ knows. _ He knows how it feels to wake up held in the arms he’s spent far too many council meetings and sparring sessions admiring, how it feels to be safe and warm with Sokka at his side, how it feels to be on the receiving end of Sokka’s protective instinct.

Option two: Zuko can be selfish, and revel in the intimacy of this situation for as long as he can get away with it.

In the end, he doesn’t get to choose. He pushes gently against Sokka’s arm, trying to sit up, and is met with more resistance than he expects. Sokka’s grip tightens, a long sigh escaping from his mouth. The optimist that has taken up residence in Zuko’s mind since the end of the war wonders quietly if it’s an entirely unconscious gesture after all.

* * *

Zuko has barely set foot on the docks before Katara’s arms are flung around him. She freezes there for a second, remembering herself and the manners she should be showing the Firelord, before very clearly deciding to throw them to the wind. 

He holds her tight against him, and when she says, “It’s good to see you, Zuko,” he holds her tighter.

He makes a decision then, and says into her hair, “I need to tell you something.”

“Right now?”

“Later,” he tells her, but he’s not certain which of them he’s promising. "Tomorrow."

The sound of feet on the gangplank behind him is thunderous. Sokka jabs him in the back with the hilt of his sword and says, “Quit hogging my sister.”

Zuko lets her go, and she all but leaps at Sokka. Something graceful and sunny blooms in his chest at the sight of them, and he couldn’t stop the smile that breaks out on his face if he wanted to.

“Where’s Aang?” Sokka asks, once he lets Katara go.

“He’s on one of the other islands, I think,” she says. She walks them up the docks to the base of an impressive cliff, stairs carved precariously out of the rock face. “We’ll have him back by dinnertime, I’m sure.”

Sokka stares up at the cliff wall. “It’ll take us that long to get to the village, Katara.”

She laughs at him, and Zuko wonders how he’s gone so long without hearing that sound. There’s a certain kind of joy in it, the same kind he hears in Sokka’s, that makes him want to offer her a permanent job at the palace just so he can hear it more often. He doubts stealing away both of the Southern Water Tribe’s heirs would go over well with Chief Hakoda, though.

Katara pulls something dainty and white from a pocket and raises it to her lips. She blows on it for one long moment, and Zuko lets himself bask in the grin that splits Sokka’s face as he understands what’s happening.

Appa comes barrelling through the air toward them, seemingly from no direction at all, and Zuko can’t help but let out a little laugh of his own. He lands with a  _ thud _ on the only part of the dock wide enough to accommodate him.

Everything is a rush from there - a hurried dismissal of the guards that try to follow the Firelord onto the back of a flying bison, the wind in their hair as they scale the cliffside in seconds, the jump of Zuko’s heart into his throat that always comes with flying. This is its own brand of adrenaline, Zuko is convinced.

With his hair whipping in every direction and the sound of Sokka’s laughter somehow right in his ear and a hundred miles away all at once, Zuko feels the same freedom he felt on the day of the eclipse.

Somewhere over the massive swathes of green land, with the town of Shu Jing just peeking over the horizon, Zuko settles down at the back of the saddle and stares up at the clouds. Sokka parks himself beside him, and for once the closeness doesn’t drive him to distraction.

Sokka says, “Fluffy,” and Zuko laughs. It’s an easier thing to do up here, somehow.

Zuko says, “I want to do this forever,” and Sokka looks at him.

“Let’s do it,” he says. “Give your uncle the throne and we’ll run away. Let Aang and Katara find another way around the world, Appa likes you better anyway.”

Before Zuko can fall too far into the dream of  _ we’ll run away, _ Katara says from her position at the reins, “You know I can hear you, right?”

“This is a confidential discussion on the future of the Fire Nation,” Sokka says. “No unofficial personnel allowed.”

Katara laughs, and the sound barely reaches them through the rushing wind. On the island closest to them, Zuko spots a flash of fire that spurts straight up to the sky.

“What’s Aang doing, anyway?” he asks.

“I don’t really know,” Katara shouts back. “I didn’t really understand when he explained it, but he can tell you himself at dinner.”

Aang does tell them at dinner, and Zuko can’t wrap his head around it either, but Sokka is all over it. They talk for what must be an hour about the ins and outs of the local spirits and their relationship to the people of the various islands. Zuko offers a little of what he remembers of the Fire Nation legends, but that’s all he can contribute. 

He is happy just to listen, though, to sit and watch the animated way Sokka and Aang discuss plans and strategies. There’s so much love in this room, he thinks as he picks at the cold crumbs of his dinner, and it goes in every direction. This kind of meeting - of friends, equals, family - feels natural and normal in a way that the council sessions at the palace never have.

Katara and Aang had been camping in the hills nearby - Sokka’s expression turns wistful when they tell him - but once word spread of the Firelord’s imminent arrival, the town of Shu Jing decided unanimously that they be moved to one of the guest buildings on Piandao’s estate. It’s a big place, with plenty of room for every member of the palace ship’s crew to sleep comfortably in their own bed - which means, of course, that Zuko and Sokka don’t have to share while they’re here.

This fact does not stop Sokka from making himself at home on the mountain of pillows that calls itself Zuko’s bed while he goes through the movements of his bedtime routine. Zuko emerges half-dressed from his personal bathroom - only the best for the Firelord, apparently - and thinks for a moment that he has wandered into a particularly vivid dream. 

Sokka is in his night clothes, his untied hair a messy frame around his face, and plucking at the frills of a fantastically obnoxious cushion. He looks up at Zuko and grins. Zuko feels his face heat up, and curses the pink that blooms on his bare chest and chases itself all the way to his cheeks.

“Don’t tell me they double booked your room,” Zuko says. He leans in the doorway and tries to be subtle about the way he crosses his arms.

Sokka’s smile doesn’t falter. He pats the bed beside him. “Come sit with me, Firelord.”

Zuko rolls his eyes but obliges, because it’s not in his nature to deny Sokka anything and they both know it.

“Where did you go at dinner?” Sokka asks him as he settles into the mound of  _ plush. _ “It’s like you were barely there.”

Zuko doesn’t look at him, instead fiddling with the tassels on a pillow. “I was tired, I suppose. You know how I like to let you do the talking, anyway.”

That seems to satisfy Sokka, because he asks then, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

_ Something dangerous, _ Zuko thinks. “I think Katara is taking me to tea. I have, um, something to discuss with her.”

“Anything I need to concern myself with?”

That’s a hard question, because Zuko doesn’t even know if it’s something  _ he _ needs to worry about, let alone Sokka. “I don’t think so. It’s, um, personal. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

Sokka flashes him that grin again, the one that never fails to make Zuko feel like he’s melting. “You think I’m pretty?”

“I think,” Zuko says, and shoves him toward the edge of the bed, “you have your own room to be annoying in.”

Sokka sighs, and finds his feet. He pauses in the doorway, and Zuko has to pretend he wasn’t watching him go.

“Zuko,” Sokka calls, soft. He presses one temple to the doorframe. A lock of hair drifts across his face; he blows it away with a sharp puff of breath.

“What,” Zuko says.

“I think you’re pretty, too,” Sokka says, and disappears down the hall. Zuko puts out the lights in the room in a hurry, in case anyone would see the livid blush that takes over his face.

* * *

Breakfast is a sluggish, yawning affair. 

It starts early, because in a house half-full of Firebenders, it usually does. Not all of the crew are benders, but they all keep the same schedule for the sake of uniformity, so by the time the sun is all the way up over the horizon, Piandao’s guest house is a hub of - mostly still sleepy - activity. 

Zuko, awake a while but still not as alert as he probably should be by now, startles as Sokka drops down into the seat beside him at the breakfast table. His hair is still undone from sleep, and his eyes are a little bleary.

“Morning,” he says. His voice is rough, and Zuko wonders if this is the first time he’s spoken today.

“Tea?” Zuko offers. Sokka accepts, in his own way, by reaching for Zuko’s half-drunk cup and taking it for himself.

“Thanks,” Sokka says, and Zuko pretends not to be dizzy. “Is Aang up yet? He said he’d talk me through his plan for the spirit trouble before he left.”

“He’s outside. I think he’s showing off to our guards. I just hope no one challenges him to an Agni Kai.”

Sokka stands, and takes his tea with him. “I’ll go find him. I can’t imagine the treason charges you’d put on his head if he hurt one of them, I know you really like the ones who can’t count.”

He puts a hand on Zuko’s shoulder and smiles down at him. “Thanks for the tea, Your Highness.”

He maintains the contact until he's too far away for even his fingertip to reach, then lets his hand fall down to his side. As he leaves the room, Zuko is sure he knows he's being watched.

Sokka's seat isn't even cold yet when Katara materialises in it. Still in her night clothes and with her hair a nest around her head, she raises an eyebrow at him.

"He took your tea," she says. "And you're just going to let him?"

Zuko shrugs, meets her eye. "It's Sokka."

"I'd hate to see what you let him away with in the capital."

Zuko laughs, because she doesn't know the half of it.  _ Yet, _ he reminds himself, and the laughter dies in his throat.

They exchange idle chatter while Katara picks through the breakfast spread provided by the palace ship’s cook. With every second that passes, the anxious knot in the pit of Zuko’s stomach grows bigger and more uncomfortable. He excuses himself to get dressed and allows himself a whole five minutes of lying face-down on his bed to collect his thoughts.

His thoughts, it seems, do not want to be collected.

Everything he wants to say is a complicated tangle in his mind, each confession and question tumbling over the next, and they’re all very loud. By the time he’s dressed and standing at the door waiting for Katara to find a blanket to go with her picnic basket, he feels like he might burst the minute she looks at him.

Aang is gone by the time they leave, so there’s just Sokka left to see them off.

“Have fun with your -” he gestures wavily “-  _ whatever _ you’re doing.”

Zuko sees Sokka in his sleeveless tunic with his sword at his side, and he doesn’t want to go anymore. He wants to stay and watch Sokka train with Piandao in Fire Nation colours until the sun gets too high for shirts at all - and as he’s thinking this, Zuko feels himself leaning infinitesimally into Sokka’s space, feels his own expression start to go dopey.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Katara looking seriously between them, and he wonders if he even needs to have any conversation with her at all. 

“You too, Sokka,” she says, her voice slow and just  _ knowing _ enough for Zuko’s stomach to give a nervous lurch. “Give Piandao our best.”

Katara hooks an arm through Zuko’s and pulls him along.

“I’m sure you’re eager to see your old master again,” she says once they’re a good distance from the guest house, “but you sounded pretty serious yesterday. I get the feeling this - whatever it is - isn’t something that you want to keep on your chest for much longer.”

“Huh,” Zuko says. Maybe she hasn’t figured it out. Or maybe she has, and she’s just being kind.

“What?” Katara turns a sweet smile on him, and he starts to lean more toward  _ kind. _

“I - nothing. Where are we going?”

“Just over this hill,” she says, gesturing straight ahead. “The slope is less steep on the other side, and there’s a freshwater stream so we can make tea. It’s, um, pretty secluded, too.”

She says this last part quietly, like she’s not sure what it really means.

They don’t talk as they scale the hill. Zuko tries to take the silence as a chance to get his thoughts in order and figure out what he’s going to say when the time comes, but the words are wild animals in his head and he doesn’t know if he can trust them in his mouth.

They reach the summit, and Zuko steels himself. He knows what he needs to say - how he says it doesn’t matter, not really. 

Katara looks at him for approval before she lays down their blanket. Her eyes are still smiling, Zuko notices. Something dark and spiky in his mind wonders if they’ll stay that way much longer.

“Here’s good,” he says, and she sits. Anywhere would be fine, as long as it’s just him and Katara. He’s not sure why it has to be her first - why it couldn’t be Aang, or Uncle, or himself in the mirror - but he knows it does. It has to be her, he can feel that in his gut.

He pulls the teapot from the picnic basket and gestures toward the stream, clear and clean, just as promised. “I’ll, uh - yeah. Just a second.”

He fills the pot at the stream, just a little bit apart from Katara, and he knows he’s stalling. He’s putting this off, for no reason other than that he’s scared.

And that’s just it. He’s scared. He’s been scared this whole time. It doesn’t feel as good to admit to himself as he thinks it should.

He takes a deep breath, drops a handful of chamomile leaves in with the water, and turns back to join Katara on the blanket. He traps fire in his palms and uses it to heat the pot. The heat bleeding from his skin doesn’t alleviate any of his anxiety like he hoped it might.

Katara sets out cups and food stolen from the breakfast table, and finally lets slip the all-important question, “What did you want to talk about?”

The heat in his hands reacts to the fear that leaps into his throat. The pot glows orange where he touches it. He wills his hands not to shake as he pours.

Katara takes her cup with a smile, and holds it in both hands. She doesn’t push him to answer right away, and her face doesn’t hold anything but fondness. Zuko sets the pot down and folds his hands into his lap.

“I have to tell you something,” he says, surprised by the surety of his own voice. “And you can’t tell anyone. I need you to promise.”

“Okay,” Katara’s pleasant expression doesn’t crack, and Zuko anchors himself to it. When he doesn’t say anything, she says, “You can take your time.”

He doesn’t want to take his time. He’s  _ done _ with taking his time.

“I just -” he starts, then stops. “I don’t want anything to be different after I tell you this.”

He takes a breath at the same time as Katara says, “Zuko,” and then -

“I don’t like girls. Not like - I don’t like girls in  _ that _ way.”

Katara blinks at him, and he can’t look at her. “So you -”

Zuko takes another breath, and it doesn’t feel like enough, but it is. “I like boys.”

It feels too small. It doesn’t match everything he’s carried with him all these years - all the turmoil, the fear, the doubt - and yet, he feels lighter. Like he’s been underwater, and now he can breathe. Now he can breathe.

“Zuko,” Katara says, and her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it. “Why would that change anything?”

A lump forms in his throat. He says to his hands, “I didn’t know how you would react. You’re the only person I’ve told.”

She whispers, “Oh, Zuko,” and he realises the implication of _I didn’t know if it was safe_ isn’t lost on her. She reaches over and takes his hand. He’s far enough away that she has to steady herself on her other hand, but it doesn’t stop her.

He looks at her, finally, and her cheeks are wet. He realises, too late, that they match his own.

“I don’t know how they do things in the Fire Nation,” Katara says, and Zuko is sure it’s not a full truth, “but in the Southern Water Tribe, love is never a shameful thing.”

She shifts closer to him and puts a cup in his free hand. She keeps a hold on the other, and Zuko finds himself thankful for it. The tenderness of the touch grounds him, gives him something to focus on while he tries to forget the feeling of shame.

“Have some tea,” Katara says. “It’ll help.”

“You sound just like Uncle.” Zuko is surprised by the laugh that comes with it.

“That’s never a bad thing,” Katara says, and maybe she’s right.

He sips his tea, still piping hot, and it does help. He drinks until it doesn’t hurt to swallow, until the lump in his throat is gone, until his eyes are dry, until his cup is empty. Until he can look Katara in the eye and smile back at her.

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For -” Zuko doesn’t know what for. “Just, thank you.”

“Zuko, you’re family,” Katara tells him, as if that explains everything. It doesn’t, not for him, but he thinks he’s starting to get it. “I hope you know that something like this - it would never change how we feel about you.”

Zuko sighs. He doesn’t understand how she can be so  _ sure. _ “But you won’t tell anyone, right? I’m not ready for that yet.”

She smiles at him, all the way to her eyes. “I promised, didn’t I?”

Zuko feels exhausted suddenly, like Katara’s reassurance is a pulled plug on his adrenaline. He lets himself fall forward into her space, his head landing on her shoulder. She drops his hand and wraps both arms around him, pulling him close like he did to her on the docks the day before.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You’re okay.”

He believes her.

* * *

Piandao joins them at dinner, for a little while, and asks a thousand questions about the Jasmine Dragon and how Iroh is doing. After the day Zuko has had, he is more than happy to talk about something easy like this.

After, when the food is cleared away and Piandao is gone again, Katara finds him at the back of the guest house watching the setting sun paint the sky shades of red and purple. She settles beside him and matches his crossed legs on the uneven stone.

They don’t talk, but the quiet doesn’t feel like the burden it was earlier. She rests her head on his shoulder.

There’s another conversation Zuko thinks they should probably have, but it might be even more perilous than the first one. He wants to have it, though, and he feels bold and safe with her.

“Katara,” Zuko says, “what does it mean when a boy says he wants to be wooed?”

She has a delightfully scandalous note in her voice when she asks, “So there’s a boy?”

A triumphant yell comes from inside, where a game of pai sho has just been won. Zuko’s cheeks are on fire. “There’s a boy.”

“And he wants to be wooed.”

“That’s what he said,” he tells her, “but I think it might have been a joke.”

“Ah,” Katara says, “but you don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” Zuko admits. “I don’t know how to do any of this. I don’t know how to  _ start _ doing any of this. I don’t even know if he - if he feels like that.”

“Zuko,” Katara says, and finally lifts her head to look at him in disbelief, “are you asking me how to talk to boys?”

Zuko winces. “Maybe?”

“Okay,” she says, and her smile is wicked.

“Am I going to regret this?”

“No!” She takes his hand. “I give great advice.”

“No, you don’t. Remember when -”

“I do when it’s important,” she says, and Zuko feels a rush of fondness for her and the earnest tone of her voice. “This is important.”

Zuko sighs. He tells her about his trip to Ba Sing Se and Uncle telling him to stop worrying so much, and how that advice is hard to follow because he’s the Firelord and his great-grandfather made the thing he’s worried about illegal a century ago and quite literally none of his advisors think he has enough of the Fire Nation on his side to change that right now.

Katara doesn’t interrupt him once, and every word out of his mouth is easier than the last. They come tumbling out, one after the other, and by the time he’s done he thinks he might not need to speak for another week.

When he takes a deep breath and doesn’t say anything else, Katara frowns at him. “You  _ do _ worry too much.”

He looks at her, pleading, and she takes his hands in her lap and continues, “But I don’t think  _ going with the flow _ is working for you. You know better than anyone the power of taking destiny into your own hands. Let things happen, sure, but don’t be a passenger in your own life, Zuko.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying complacency isn’t your style. Where you can, if you can, take action. And if it doesn’t go your way, at least you tried. At least you’ll know.”

“I -” Zuko takes his hands back. “Thank you, Katara.”

The sky is black now, so many of the stars drowned out by the light of Shu Jing. Zuko stands, and brushes the dust off his pants. He walks back to the house, something buoyant and new in his chest.

“Zuko,” Katara’s voice stops him in the doorway. “If it doesn’t go your way, he’s an idiot.”


	3. Chapter 3

Zuko is alone in his study preparing for a meeting with the Ba Sing Se representatives, and has been for hours. It's late, far too late to still be working, but this meeting only happens twice a year because of the travel requirements, and it's in _three days._

He feels like he could sleep for a week and it still wouldn’t be enough.

He finishes another scroll and puts it to the side, and groans at the mountain of unread parchment on the other side. The sun has long since set, and Zuko is starting to think that banging his head against the desk might be a more productive use of his time.

Someone knocks at the door once, twice, once more.

There are three possibilities here: a guard come to tell him it’s past his bedtime, Sokka come to do the same, or an assassin. Assassins usually don’t knock, so he thinks that one’s unlikely, but might actually be preferable.

“Go away,” he calls over his shoulder, and winces at the rudeness of it. “I’m busy.”

Knocking again. Then, through the door, a voice that Zuko would know anywhere, badly disguised or not: “Firelord Zuko, you have a visitor.”

Zuko’s chair scrapes against the floor as he stands. He sighs as he crosses the room, and again when he reaches for the door. “Sokka, I don’t have time for -”

He opens the door, and there’s Sokka in a uniform either borrowed or stolen - most likely the latter - from a guard. His grin is just visible in the low light of the hallway. As much as he really doesn’t have time for this, it brightens Zuko’s mood just a touch.

“Sokka,” Zuko says, and he couldn’t help the fondness in his voice if he tried, “what’s going on?”

Sokka puts on his guard-voice again. “You have a visitor, Firelord Zuko.”

“Sokka, you _live here,_ you don’t -”

Zuko cuts himself short when Sokka steps aside to reveal the visitor, and he’s really too busy for this kind of pageantry. He tries to tell Sokka as much, and then the visitor steps forward out of the shadows and -

“Uncle?” Zuko’s face lights up, taken over by a smile that feels too wide to contain. “You’re not supposed to arrive for another two days - what are you doing here?”

“I’m not here officially,” Iroh says, a coy lilt to his words. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Zuko allows himself to be pulled down into his uncle’s arms, a sudden wave of guilt rushing over him when he remembers his blunt tone from earlier. He starts to apologise but Iroh squeezes so tightly Zuko’s bones start to pop, so he figures they’re even.

Over his uncle’s shoulder, Zuko catches sight of Sokka again. His grin is still there, splitting his face, but it seems softer around the edges somehow. Like he wasn’t expecting it to be seen.

“I knew this week would be hard on you,” Sokka says, rubbing at the back of his neck, “so I wrote a couple of letters and called in a few favours with the air fleet - you’d be surprised how much leverage _inventing_ the airship gets you - and I, uh, got you a present. Surprise.”

“Your Ambassador was quite persuasive,” Iroh says. He releases Zuko from his embrace. “He will make a fine leader one day.”

Zuko is overwhelmed with affection. Knowing that his uncle would be at the Ba Sing Se meeting was all that had kept him going these past few weeks he’s spent preparing, and now - now he doesn’t have to wait any longer, because Sokka knows him better than he knows himself.

He throws his arms around Sokka and clings to him like his life depends on it. He whispers, “Thank you.”

Sokka holds him around the waist, no space between them, and Zuko wishes foolishly that he could stay here forever. Sokka smells of laughter and dust and boy. Zuko thinks he might be happy to suffocate on it.

“It’s not a big deal,” Sokka says. Zuko lets him go at the sound of Iroh clearing his throat behind them.

 _It is a big deal,_ Zuko thinks. _Everything about you is a big deal._

His stomach drops then, as he realises something terrible. He turns to his uncle and says, his voice grave, “You’re not supposed to be here yet. Your room isn’t ready.”

“He can take my room,” Sokka says, and there’s something sheepish about his voice. “It’s too late now to go bothering the staff to fix up something half-assed when there’s a perfectly clean Ambassador’s suite already made up. Just for the night, obviously. I don’t think you have the authority to kick me out permanently.”

“Uncle is my next of kin, technically,” Zuko says, “if you don’t count Azula. So he does have that authority. I think.”

Iroh’s face scrunches into an expression of concern, and he points it at Sokka. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Not after all you’ve done to get me here.”

“It’s no trouble!” Sokka insists. He falters a little then, unsure. “I’ll just, um -”

“You’ll stay in my b- _chambers,_ ” Zuko catches himself just in time. He feels panic in his blood as he realises what he’s just said, what an offer like that might sound like to a stranger to their relationship. What it might sound like to his uncle.

“It’s just for the night,” he urges, “and I still have work to do here, I might not even make it to bed.”

“Sure,” Sokka eyes him carefully. He turns to Iroh, “How would you like an armed escort to your room for the night?”

Zuko is fairly sure the Dragon of the West is already pretty well armed on his own, but Iroh is jovial and enthusiastic in his acceptance. Zuko doesn’t blame him - but maybe he has a different reason for wanting Sokka to lead him to his bedroom.

“I’ll see you in a while,” Sokka says to Zuko.

“Maybe,” Zuko replies.

Sokka looks at him like he should know better. He says again, “I’ll see you in a while,” and leads Iroh away down the hall and out of sight.

Alone again, Zuko returns to his desk, where his mountain of work suddenly looks more like a molehill. When he sits, he feels motivation course through him like it almost never does with this kind of busy work, and starts reading. 

His good mood doesn’t last nearly as long as he needs it to. In the time it takes for all the joy he felt at seeing his uncle to drain from his body, he’s barely made a dent in the pile of documents that seems to grow higher with every passing minute. He decides to give up when he realises he’s been reading the same sentence over and over for what feels like a thousand years without absorbing any information.

His eyelids droop as he puts out the lights and retires his ink for the night, but once he’s out in the corridor on his way to his chambers he is wide awake - jittery, almost.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed since they parted ways. He has no way to know if Sokka will still be awake, but just the knowledge that he will be in Zuko’s bed when he gets there is enough to set him on edge. They are once again sharing a bed on purpose, and they’ve been home from Shu Jing so long that the concept is shiny and new again. As much as Zuko tries to fight it, the thought of it sends an exhilarant chill down his spine.

Zuko reaches the royal chambers, and Sokka isn’t asleep. He’s sitting up in bed - _Zuko’s bed_ \- thumbing through a nightstand book that hasn’t been touched in weeks, a concentrated furrow in his brow. He looks up when Zuko comes in, and his expression loosens into the easy smile that weakens Zuko’s knees every time he sees it.

Zuko takes the whole scene in from the doorway, and feels a longing right down to his bones.

“You’re still up?” he asks, moving into the room. 

He strips off his shirt and kicks off his shoes. In a stunning act of confidence, he steps out of his trousers too. He digs through the drawers on the far side of the room for pajamas, his back to the bed, and convinces himself he’s imagining the feeling of Sokka’s eyes on him.

“You didn’t think I’d let you away with not saying goodnight, did you?” There’s a funny kind of strain in Sokka’s voice that Zuko can’t quite place. Zuko looks at him as he crosses the room again to the vacant side of the bed, but Sokka won’t meet his eye.

He slips under the covers beside Sokka then, and something inside Zuko tells him in a small voice that it shouldn’t be this easy.

But it is. It’s _easy._

Easy in a way he didn’t ever think he would get to have, because people like him don’t get to have _easy._ It’s comfortable and casual and painless. He really thought it would be harder to let himself have this.

He doesn’t get to have this, though, not really. This is just for the night, and then it’ll all be gone again - the subdued thrill of Sokka’s body next to him, the quiet sounds he makes as he squirms into a comfortable position, the push-and-pull tide of his breathing - but tonight, he has it. 

Tonight, Zuko gets to pretend.

Sokka sets his book aside. Zuko puts out the lamp on his side - it’s dangerous to slip into that dreamy idea of _his side,_ but Zuko goes anyway - and feels the sudden darkness like a weight on his chest.

"Sokka," he says into the black. His eyes adjust slowly to the dark, enough to make out the shape of Sokka flat on his back to the left.

"Yeah?" Sokka's voice is already starting to drift toward sleep. Zuko envies him.

"Thank you," Zuko says. "For - for what you did for me."

“What are friends for, right?”

“Right,” Zuko says. Sokka yawns beside him, too far and too close all at once, and all Zuko can do is think _I want to be more._

_I want to be more. I want to be more. I want to be more._

He thinks _I want to be more_ until the room is full of it, until the palace is full of it, until the whole damn Fire Nation is full of it.

“Sokka,” he says again, rolling onto his side and curling toward him.

_I want to be more._

“Hm?” Sokka doesn’t roll, but turns his head to look at him. His face seems much closer than Zuko expected it to be.

_I want to be more._

“I -” Zuko says, and suddenly his nerve is gone. Drained from him like air from a punctured balloon.

“Zuko,” Sokka says. Somehow it sounds less like _Zuko_ and more like _please._

“You’re my best friend,” Zuko whispers. “You know that, right?”

Sokka smiles at him. Zuko can barely see it, but he can feel it, cutting through the dark and the fog of his thoughts to settle under his skin like a promise. Like a parasite.

“Yeah,” Sokka says, “I know that.”

 _I want to be more,_ Zuko thinks, loud in his mind like an earthquake. He says, “Goodnight, Sokka,” and thinks some more, until the pressure of it smothers him into sleep.

And when Zuko wakes at dawn with Sokka’s arms around him and Sokka’s breath on his neck, it comes to him again.

_I want to be more._

* * *

The day before the Ba Sing Se meeting is a rare one: there are no council sessions to attend, no budgets needing urgent attention, no politicians talking in Zuko’s ear about new strategies for lining their pockets with money that should be going elsewhere, and - after holing himself up in his study for the whole of the day before - no more studying left to do for the meeting.

Zuko has a whole day free from commitments, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He roams the palace listlessly for a while, before ending up at the courtyard.

He sits under the tree at the turtleduck pond and waits for someone to tell him that the Firelord doesn’t get to have free time, but no such person arrives. He feels a peculiar kind of peace in this spot, like nothing bad can happen as long he’s here with the strong trunk of the tree at his back.

Iroh doesn’t say anything when he takes a seat in the grass beside Zuko. They sit quietly for a long time, watching the turtleducks splash and duck under the water. They scurry away to the other side of the pond for a while, until Iroh produces a small loaf of bread to draw them back.

He hands half the loaf to Zuko as he speaks for the first time since sitting down. “You used to come here all the time when you were a child.”

Zuko looks at him. “I did. This is one of the things I missed most when I was banished. It’s -” he struggles for the right word “- comforting.”

Iroh tilts his head, curious. “Are you troubled, Nephew?”

Zuko isn’t sure. He wasn’t troubled when he sat down - or maybe he was, but didn’t notice it. He realises now that he is, and has been, bothered by some nagging thing in the back of his mind, ever since his uncle arrived from the Earth Kingdom.

But that’s not right, either. This nagging thing is never truly at the back of his mind, only ever caught in his throat, an inch from the open air.

“There is something,” he says, and a wretched ball of anxiety forms in his gut, a more pointed version of the one he felt on that hill in Shu Jing. He leans his head against the tree, the quiet _tink_ of his hairpiece on the wood a barely audible sound, and it puts him at a tentative kind of ease.

“I am always happy to lend an ear,” Iroh says. “I will help you in any way I can, Nephew, even if all I can do is listen.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything for a moment. He wonders, as he works up his nerve, if his uncle’s knack for saying the right thing is just that, or if he knows more than he lets on.

“Uncle,” he says, and he thinks he sees one of the turtleducks smile at him, “I like boys.”

Iroh is silent a moment, and Zuko holds his breath, and then -

Iroh laughs. It’s a deep, hearty sound, so out of pace with the tension Zuko holds in every one of his muscles. Zuko exhales like the air has been knocked out of him.

“Is that all?” Iroh asks.

Zuko says, “Yes,” and it comes out far more pleading than he intends it.

“My dear nephew,” Iroh says, and Zuko feels so immeasurably safe, “who you love - who you _are_ \- should never be what causes you trouble. There are a thousand things worthy of your worry. This is not one of them.”

Zuko doesn’t know what to say, so for a long time he says nothing at all. 

“Thank you,” he says, eventually, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not big enough to hold all that he feels - all the relief, the love, the hope. Something hot prickles at his eyes. He blinks, and a single drop hits his cheek.

“What for?” Iroh chuckles. “I should be thanking you, Zuko. For sharing this part of yourself with me. I am so grateful for the trust you have in me. I hope I deserve it.”

Zuko turns to him then, and finds his arms already waiting. He falls into them, safe and secure, and feels like a boy again. He says it again, into his uncle’s chest, “Thank you.”

Zuko pushes himself back up, and they sit in a comfortable silence for another while, until commotion on the far side of the courtyard attracts their attention.

Sokka bounds up to them, more spring than step, his grin a gleaming beacon of trouble. He calls out, "Firelord Zuko!" and Zuko feels his face heat up.

He throws himself noisily to the ground beside Zuko and drops his head into Zuko’s lap. Several turtleducks rush away to the other side of the pond, and Zuko can feel their bright little eyes on him, peering curiously at the vivid pink blooming in his cheeks.

“You have a day off today,” Sokka says, and Zuko almost doesn’t hear him over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, “and you didn’t tell me.”

Zuko glances over at his uncle, who appears to be engrossed in absolutely anything other than the interaction happening beside him.

“I had other things to do,” Zuko says, looking back down at Sokka. He’s caught off guard, as he often is, by just how sharply blue his eyes are.

Sokka sits up, and Zuko doesn’t know if he’s more relieved or sorry to lose the contact. “But you’re free now?”

Zuko shrugs, "I guess so," and there's something a little bit wild in Sokka's smile as he leaps to his feet.

"Excellent," he says, stretching a hand out to Zuko. "Come with me."

Zuko takes his hand and feels a jolt under his skin at the touch. If that’s all it takes to elicit a reaction like this, he’s not sure if Katara’s advice of _taking action_ is good for his health.

Then again, he’s not sure _Katara_ will be good for his health if she ever finds out who exactly it is he’s steering his destiny towards.

Zuko uses Sokka to haul himself to his feet, and when he lets his hand go slack, Sokka doesn’t let it drop. Zuko’s heart races.

“Where are we going?” Zuko asks. Sokka tugs him along with him toward the palace. 

In truth, it doesn’t matter where they’re going. Zuko knows he would follow Sokka anywhere if it meant he would be on the receiving end of that winning smile.

“You’ll see,” Sokka promises.

Zuko glances over his shoulder as he goes. He calls out, “I’ll see you for dinner, Uncle!”

Iroh’s expression is complicated, and Zuko can’t read it. He says, simply, “Enjoy yourself.”

Zuko looks back to Sokka. “I will see him for dinner, right? You’re not exploiting my blind trust in you to have me killed, are you?”

“You can see him again in twenty minutes if you need to,” Sokka says. “Now pick up the pace or you’ll miss it.”

“Miss what?”

They’re away from the courtyard now, back into the gaping corridors of the palace, and Sokka is still holding his hand. Zuko feels breathless, and it’s only partly from their running.

“Sokka,” he pants as they slow down to turn a corner. “What’s going on?”

Sokka just pulls on his hand. “We’re nearly there. It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t have another uncle -”

“Not for _you,_ idiot,” Sokka says. “I think it’s for both of us.”

They turn into the main entrance hall and Sokka uses his free hand to signal to the guards stationed at the front door of the palace to let them out. They burst through into the sunlight and finally come to a slow stop, and Zuko sees it.

“No,” he says, embarrassed all of a sudden to be holding Sokka’s hand as he says it, “that’s just for you.”

Appa, as white and big as the day is long, lands in a cloud of dust at the bottom of the palace steps. Waving from the saddle on his back, Katara and Aang let out excited cheers at the sight of Sokka and Zuko at the top of the steps.

Sokka drops Zuko’s hand like he’d forgotten he was holding it, and turns to him. “What are you talking about?”

Zuko looks at him. “The Ba Sing Se meetings are going to take a few days, and you’re not on the guestlist - don’t give me that face, I tried my best - but I didn’t want you to be bored without me, so -”

It dawns on Sokka then, and his smile might be the biggest Zuko has ever seen. “You did this? For me?”

“You’re not the only one who knows how to write a letter,” Zuko says. 

If his cheeks are red and his breath catches when he meets Sokka’s bright eyes, full of joy and something else Zuko can’t quite place - well, he’s just run half the length of the palace. That’s to be expected.

* * *

Zuko’s regular council sessions were a drain on his energy already, but the Ba Sing Se meetings are like a burst dam. 

After the first day of meetings almost turns into a _night,_ Zuko sets a rule making dusk the cut off point for any political discussion that isn’t him complaining loudly to his friends about the whole ordeal. He eats better than he has in weeks once he realises that strict adherence to mealtimes gets him a break from talks every few hours.

Having Iroh in the meetings is a blessing, though he’s sure the other Ba Sing Se representatives don’t quite trust his presence. There are moments - that occur far too frequently for Zuko’s sense of pride - when Zuko will lose focus for a second and miss something, and Iroh will step in with the appropriate response and expect nothing but Zuko’s small, apologetic smile in return.

Zuko’s only real respite is the evening time he makes sure to keep clear. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked forward to dinner so much in his life.

On the first day, Zuko is hell-bent on powering through and finishing strong. By the end of the third day, he thinks he’ll be lucky if he makes it to the end of the week without abdicating.

His mood is particularly stormy at dinner on that third day. It must show on his face, because Katara’s determinedly roguish expression as she sits next to him at the table tells him she means business.

“Firelord Zuko,” she says, her voice impish. She makes herself at home in the seat usually taken up by Sokka, as if it had always been hers.

There’s mischief on her mind, and it may as well be inked across her forehead.

“Katara, I’m so tired.” Zuko feels bad for denying her fun before she’s even started, but not bad enough to stop him.

“I know,” she says. “I just thought, maybe later - if you’re not too busy, of course - you might like to talk.”

“Talk?” Zuko doesn’t trust her.

“Sure,” she affirms. “The future of the Fire Nation depends on it.”

Zuko remembers those words coming from Sokka on their trip to Shu Jing, and for a moment he is alight with panic. Fear courses through him at the thought of Katara knowing the truth of his feelings and thinking him unworthy of her brother. 

His face must betray him again, because Katara’s eyes rush full of concern. She takes his hand. His fear subsides.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” she says, and her voice matches the look she gives him. “I just meant I talked to Iroh, and he said you were really stressed after today, so I thought I’d try to help you out. Just - come meet me after dinner. I’ll be in the gardens. Dress comfortably.”

“You talked to Uncle?” Zuko asks. Every word of what she said is suspicious to his mind, but that’s the first thing he processes enough to ask about.

Katara doesn’t answer, just smiles and walks away. Before Zuko can call after her, dinner is served and the seat beside him is occupied again, this time by Sokka. 

In the flickering light of the ornate chandelier above the table, Zuko notices a single small braid woven into Sokka’s wolftail. The sight of it soothes whatever anxiety remained from talking to Katara.

“I like your hair.” He points at it, feeling a soft smile sneak onto his face, and swears he sees a little bit of pink in Sokka’s cheeks.

Sokka mumbles, “Thank you,” in that flustered way he has that makes Zuko’s head feel full of air any time he manages to bring it out.

“What did you do today?” Zuko asks.

Sokka’s eyes light up, and he launches into a story about trying to teach Aang to play pai sho. Zuko eats while the words come rolling out of Sokka’s mouth like the world’s most excited train of thought. Occasionally, Zuko notices that his mouth won’t close around his food in order to make way for the stupid smile taking up residence there.

Their plates are empty and cleared away, and Sokka is still talking, and Zuko is still hanging on every word. He stops suddenly, and Zuko blinks at him, watching a kind of shyness creep into the set of his mouth.

“What?” Zuko asks.

“You have, um,” Sokka says, and his eyes flit down to Zuko’s mouth. “It’s just a little - here, let me -”

Sokka reaches for Zuko’s face, and everything in the world stops. 

His fingers rest on Zuko’s jaw in a way that feels far too much like a _caresse,_ as he swipes the rough pad of his thumb across the small patch of skin just above Zuko’s chin. The very tip of his thumb catches Zuko’s bottom lip, and Zuko feels as if all the air has been sucked out of the room.

“There,” Sokka says, and drops his hand, “you’re perfect.”

Zuko almost doesn’t hear him. He feels a hundred miles away from his body, like he’s watching the whole scene unfold from above. He is both hyper-aware of and unable to feel several other pairs of eyes on him, trapped under the weight of Sokka’s gaze.

He comes out of his daze as abruptly as he’d fallen into it. “Thanks,” he says, a bare whisper of a word. 

He tears his eyes from Sokka’s and catches his uncle, halfway down the table, looking away from them too quickly to be entirely innocent.

* * *

The moon, crescent and bright, casts the gardens in a pale blue glow. Trails of bushes and trees and hanging flowers snake together into a maze Zuko has always been fascinated by, covering every inch of this courtyard, the largest of the whole palace grounds.

Zuko finds Katara in the middle of it all, sitting on one of the benches at a crossroads of tall, arching trees with branches blooming in all colours. Brilliant white flowers drop on thin vines from the canopy above her, and weave into her hair without protest under the guidance of her hands.

She looks like magic, Zuko thinks, as he leans against the trunk of a tree opposite her.

“Zuko,” she calls, and pats the bench, “won’t you join me?”

Wary still, he takes a seat beside her. 

“I love this place,” Katara says, her eyes fixed on the artificial ceiling of branches and leaves. “When you showed it to us the first time we visited, I couldn’t believe that it existed. I didn’t think the Fire Nation could have something so pure as this.”

Zuko looks down at his hands in his lap. “It didn’t.”

Katara looks at him, sharp. “What?”

“I had it made,” Zuko says. “This spot used to be overflow for the training grounds. But with the war over, the army doesn’t need the extra space, so I had it converted. I wanted somewhere I could take visitors - you guys, mostly - that didn’t look like the world my father wanted to build.”

Zuko remembers the day of his coronation, when all he’d had to show his friends was the palace, and how it hadn’t felt like he was showing them his home. It wasn’t his then, not yet. Maybe it still isn’t, but he’s getting there.

“Is this where you come when you’re stressed?” Katara asks.

“No,” he tells her, thinking of the courtyard with the pond. “This is where I come when I want to be alone.”

Katara’s gaze is searching when he meets it, so he elaborates. “Not a lot of people come here. I make sure it’s well-tended, obviously, but it’s really just me and a handful of palace staff who really appreciate this place. And Sokka.”

He stops there, afraid to say much more in case he lets slip more than he means to. He doesn’t tell Katara about the way Sokka always falls quiet when he’s here, how the sunlight the gardens catch bounces off vivid petals and paints Sokka’s smile a thousand colours, how Sokka never leaves without learning the name of a new flower. 

He doesn’t tell her about the day they came here and sat in the evening sun, when Sokka wore a chain of flowers as a crown just to make him laugh and he realised he didn’t just love Sokka as a best friend.

“I don’t have to be the Firelord here,” he says. “I can just be myself.”

It feels silly to say it out loud, but it’s the truth. 

“Is that why you wanted to come here?” he asks. “To relax me?”

“No,” Katara says, and that devilish smile from earlier is back. “I asked you to meet me here because I wanted you to feel safe. Before I take you to do something a little more dangerous.”

Zuko has barely formed a question in his mind before she grabs his hand and pulls him with her in a run. It’s the same thing that Sokka had done on the day she arrived, but Zuko can’t help but notice in this moment how different the feeling is. He feels the same thrill of the unknown as he did with Sokka, but there’s nothing alive under his skin where they touch the way there was that day.

They pass guards on patrol in the corridors, who do nothing but make small noises of surprise and raise quizzical eyebrows at them. Zuko isn’t sure if that’s strictly adherent to their oath to protect the Firelord at any cost, but he also isn’t sure he cares.

They arrive at the main training grounds, and Katara drops his hand. She leaves him at the threshold, still a little dazed, and races into the yard. She finally comes to a stop by one of the pools kept for firebending-related emergencies. She turns to him and grins, fiendish under the moonlight.

She waves a hand and a silvery stream of water moves from the pool to surround her. She holds her hands in front of her, bracing herself and beckoning him.

“Is this what we’re doing?” Zuko sighs. He steps into the yard and lights one hand, the heat familiar and comforting. “You know the moon gives you an advantage.”

“I’ll go easy,” Katara says, and they both know it’s a lie.

Zuko throws the fire in his hand like a ball and launches a second one from his other hand. Katara’s water whips them both aside with the flick of her wrist. He rushes her, weaving in and out of the stream as she sends it his way, and leaping when it turns to ice at his feet.

When he reaches her, he swipes a long streak of solid orange flame at her, breaking the stream as it tries to wrap around him. In close like this, there’s not much either of them can do but try to drive the other away, which is precisely Zuko’s plan. He sweeps a line of fire at her feet, forcing her to jump back away from him.

Katara responds to this by sending water to snake around his ankles almost playfully, before hardening it into icy hurdles that trip Zuko off his feet. He tumbles through the fall, sending fire her direction with a grunt, but it’s not enough. He takes too long getting off the floor. When he finally rises, his hands still lit, there are a thousand pointed shards of ice where there once was empty space.

Katara stands just a few feet away, her grin smug and rightly so. Zuko extinguishes his hands and raises them in surrender. He catches a glimpse of madness in her eye, and for a moment he thinks he’s imagining it. Then, the ice lifts up over his head, and he knows exactly what’s coming.

Katara drops her hands with a particular flourish, and water rains down on Zuko in a torrent. 

“I hate when you do that,” he says. Drying off isn’t a problem; firebenders run hot enough that some of the water is starting to evaporate already. It’s the _having_ to dry off that Zuko takes issue with.

“That’s why I do it,” Katara grins at him.

There’s a laugh somewhere to the side, and that’s when Zuko realises they have an audience. He whips his head to the left and spots Aang on the lip of the other pool with Sokka leaning against an equipment shed beside it. Something lumpy and vaguely shiny lies at his feet, but Zuko can’t quite make out what it is in this light.

“Were you always that bad?” Sokka teases. “I feel like I remember you being better than that.”

Zuko shakes water from his hair, crossing the yard to join them. He doesn’t remember making the decision to move, but his feet seem to have their own idea of where he should be.

“I don’t get to practice much anymore,” he says. “There’s not a lot of people around eager to go up against me now that I have such a fancy hairpiece.”

“Pity,” Katara says, taking a seat next to Aang. “They’d win.”

Zuko looks at her. “What was the point of this? Did you just feel like drowning me?”

Katara laughs. “The idea was to tire you out so you could get a decent night’s sleep. But with all due respect, Zuko, I don’t think that’ll happen if that’s the best you can do.”

Zuko’s face heats up, and he scowls at her. “That’s not -”

“I thought this might happen,” Sokka interrupts him, and Zuko looks away from Katara, “so I came prepared.”

Sokka reaches down to the lump beside him and pulls out his sword and Zuko’s dao. He draws his sword from its scabbard and tosses Zuko’s to him, hilt first. Zuko catches it without looking, his eyes still stuck on Sokka’s.

Sokka smiles at him like a shark. He waves his sword around vaguely, like he’s testing the balance.

“What do you say?” he asks, as Zuko draws his swords. “You want to go a round with the only guy in the city willing to knock the Firelord on his ass?”

Zuko grins, confidence thrumming under his skin. _This,_ he can do. He splits his swords, swings them around a little bit to get a feel for them. The moonlight bounces dully off the blades. He takes slow steps backwards into the wider space of the yard, and watches the careful way Sokka follows him.

Aang and Katara, watching them by the water, melt into nothing. 

There is only this: the familiar weight of his swords, and the heat of Sokka’s eyes on his every move.

They circle each other for a little while. There’s no reflection on Sokka’s sword, black as the sky above, when he takes a valiant leaping swing at Zuko, closing the distance between them. Zuko catches the swing with one sword and goes against the arc of it with the other. Sokka’s reflexes are fast, and he meets each swing of Zuko’s swords with his own. 

For a long time, the night air is filled with nothing but the satisfying _clash_ of blades and harsh sounds of effort.

Sokka brings his sword down and Zuko crosses his own to meet it, pushing against the blade while Sokka presses down. The movement means stepping into Sokka’s space, close enough to see the sweat rolling down the side of his face and feel the heat coming off him in waves. The hair on the back of Zuko’s neck stands up.

“Sleepy yet?” Sokka taunts through bared teeth.

Zuko pushes that little bit harder and launches Sokka back a couple of feet. “I can go all night if that’s what you want.”

Zuko swings at him. Sokka blocks it easily. They trade blows like that for what feels like an eternity, dancing around each other and the training space on impossibly light feet. 

There’s a fluidity to their movements, a kind of grace, that Zuko has never had with another partner. It might be from practicing together so frequently, but Zuko wants to believe it’s something else. Something bigger.

Sokka’s tongue flits out to wet his bottom lip. It’s a tiny thing, Zuko knows this, but coupled with the lock of hair that has burst free of Sokka’s wolftail, it is downright vulgar. Their swords lock together, and Sokka does it again. Zuko’s gaze drops from Sokka’s eyes to his mouth and his mind wanders, just for a second, his pulse pounding in his ears, and -

Sokka shifts, and Zuko loses a sword. It hits the ground with an ugly _clang,_ and Sokka sends it skidding away with a sharp nudge of his foot.

Zuko’s eyes snap back up to Sokka’s. There’s a fierceness in his gaze, and something else Zuko doesn’t recognise. 

Sokka looks like he wants to eat him alive. He puffs at the lock of hair in his face and flashes Zuko that grin again - and Zuko thinks he might want to be eaten.

With one sword left, he tries to regain his focus. He shoves Sokka back, both hands now on the hilt of his sword. He presses forward, forcing Sokka to take a defensive stance. Sokka is cocky still, though, and it puts Zuko off. It must be a front, he decides, a brave face. No one’s ever that sure of themselves in this position. 

Sure enough, when Zuko’s swings get a little faster and a little harder, Sokka loses his footing and stumbles. Zuko seizes the opportunity and moves in closer, leaving Sokka no room to regain his balance. In a swift side-stepping move, he sneaks a leg in behind one of Sokka’s and - down he goes, felled like a tree. 

Zuko puts a foot on Sokka’s chest and points the tip of his blade to his throat. His hair is stuck to his forehead, his clothes are plastered to his back, and his muscles ache something fierce, but he smirks down at Sokka like it’s nothing.

“I win,” Zuko says, his breath coming in heavy pants.

He thinks he hears Sokka mutter, “I wouldn’t be so sure,” but he has that hungry look in his eye again, an untamed thing, and Zuko lets his adrenaline convince him its true name is competitive spirit.

Zuko lifts his foot and offers Sokka a hand up. Sokka takes it, and the combination of his heady stare and the brush of his fingertips against Zuko’s wrist makes Zuko’s heart pound harder than the flash of any blade ever did.


	4. Chapter 4

A letter arrives almost a month after the Ba Sing Se meetings, delivered to the dining hall at breakfast. 

This isn’t unusual in itself; Zuko has been inundated with correspondence from the Earth Kingdom with updates on the plans set over the course of the meetings ever since talks ended. What’s strange is the whale-walrus blubber seal and the fact it is addressed to Sokka - not  _ Ambassador, _ but simply  _ Sokka. _

“From home?” Zuko asks as Sokka tears the letter open. He’d finished eating already by the time Sokka was out of bed, so he has nothing on his plate to distract him while Sokka reads. Zuko watches him closely, but can’t decipher his expression.

“It’s from Katara,” Sokka says, when he’s finished. His face is still unreadable, and his voice doesn’t give anything away either. “The Water Tribes are meeting to discuss unifying. It’s happening in a month.”

Zuko’s heart plummets. 

“You have to go, don’t you?” he says. He tries not to let any of his upset into his voice, and he thinks he’s succeeding until he hears a wobble on the last word.

“Yeah,” Sokka says. He sits back in his chair and his shoulders slump back against it. He looks at the letter, but Zuko can’t tell if he’s reading again or just needs a place to look.

“When?” Zuko asks. He ignores the tightness in his chest.

“I leave in two weeks,” Sokka says. “Katara’s coming to help me pack. Aang’s giving her a ride on his way to the Northern Air Temple. She’ll be here in a couple of days.”

Zuko catches his eye then, and holds onto it for dear life.

“I can stay, if you need me here,” Sokka says, and Zuko almost wants to laugh.

“No,” he says instead, “you should go. These are your people.”

“Zuko, this could take weeks to sort out. This could take months. I don’t even know if this  _ can _ be sorted out.”

Sokka says  _ months, _ and something nervous and mean burrows into Zuko’s ribcage, hollowing out a space for itself between his lungs. 

“I want you to stay,” Zuko says, and it feels too close to a confession to be comfortable. “Believe me, I do. But your people need you. Everything will still be here when you come back.”

Sokka lets out a sigh. He looks at the letter again, tracing the lines.

“Two weeks,” he mumbles. He looks up at Zuko again. “Why does Katara think it’ll take me two weeks to pack?”

“You have a lot of stuff now. I think we probably pay you too much.”

“Two weeks seems like a lot, though, doesn’t it?”

It doesn’t. Two weeks is nothing. Two weeks is a blink of an eye. 

“For packing, yeah, I’d say so,” Zuko agrees, just for something to say. “Maybe that’s not all she’s here for.”

“Maybe,” Sokka hums thoughtfully. He folds the letter up and sets it aside, returning his attention to his breakfast with a kind of nonchalance that seems practiced.

Two weeks. That’s all. Two weeks with Sokka and then he’s gone, for however long it takes to unify two tribes who haven’t seen eye to eye for generations. 

Two weeks, Zuko thinks as he watches Sokka root through a selection of fruit, is almost no time at all.

* * *

For the next two days, Zuko avoids Sokka at all costs. He tells himself it won’t hurt as much to watch Sokka leave if he pretends he’s already gone. 

It’s a lie, of course, and not even a convincing one.

It’s easy to not be around him during the work day - not every meeting requires input from the Water Tribe, after all - but his free time borders on torturous when he can’t spend it with Sokka. 

He tries hiding out in his study, but there’s only so long he can stare at new legislation proposals before he starts to go mad, and he uses all that time up on the first night. He goes to bed earlier than usual and doesn’t sleep.

He tries his study again the next evening, but doesn’t make it past the threshold. The thought of another night of reading scrolls and signing documents he only barely understands makes him feel ill. He goes to his quarters instead, and feels the balcony he almost never uses call to him like true north calls to a compass.

The smooth tile is warm under his feet, still drenched in the heat of the afternoon. He stands at the barrier for a long time, absorbing the last fine rays of the sun as it sets over the city. When the sky is streaked with a rich shade of orange, he sits cross-legged and closes his eyes as it turns to the deep black of night.

Meditation isn’t something Zuko has a lot of time for anymore. Between his duties as Firelord and spending all his spare time falling for Sokka, he’s pretty far out of practice. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, when he tries to focus on his breathing but can’t stop thinking about how he’ll feel two weeks from now.

He already feels bad now, a brutal mix of guilt and loneliness and simmering anger all feeding off each other. It’s hard to imagine what it’ll be like when he’s not playing an active role in stoking that fire.

He realises suddenly, and with absolute clarity, that he’s being an idiot.

He’s an idiot to think that the sadness he feels at Sokka leaving won’t be worse when he’s actually gone. He’s an idiot to think he won’t still feel awful if he gets a head start on it. He’s an idiot for not being with Sokka right now, soaking up as much of him as he can.

He stands without thinking, his body making the decision before his mind. He shuts and locks the doors to the balcony on his way back inside. He turns into the room and -

He nearly jumps out of his skin, fire lighting his hand in an instant. There is Sokka, stretched out on Zuko’s bed, watching him with a detached smile.

Zuko takes a second to get his heart rate back down to normal.

“I need better guards,” he says. “How long have you been there?”

“A while,” Sokka smiles wider. 

“And you wouldn’t, I don’t know, make your presence known to the guy who taught the Avatar to firebend?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Sokka says as Zuko extinguishes his hand. “Plus, you’re cute when you’re surprised.”

Zuko hopes to the stars above that the low light of the room masks the furious heat blooming in his cheeks. “I thought you were an assassin.”

Sokka grins, sitting up. “I could still be.”

“Assassins don’t usually lounge around on my furniture,” Zuko says. He slumps back against the balcony doors, arms crossed over his chest. “For future reference.”

“Noted.”

They lapse into an odd silence, made heavy by all the things Zuko can’t say. It seems to stretch for miles between them, even as Sokka leaves the bed in favour of leaning against one of its posters closer to Zuko.

“I was on my way to find you,” Zuko says. It’s the truth, he realises. That wasn’t something he knew before he spoke.

“Really?” Sokka says. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes - Zuko is hesitant to call it hope, but that’s what it looks like.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, his voice quiet now. “You’re leaving soon, and I -”

He pauses, unsure, and Sokka looks at him with those same big eyes.

“I wanted to see you,” he finishes. This is also the truth, but in the same way that  _ the sky is blue _ is the truth. Permanent. Immutable.

“It  _ has _ been a while,” Sokka observes.

It hasn’t been a while, not by ordinary standards. It’s been a day and a half. It’s felt like an age for Zuko, but relief washes over him at the suggestion that Sokka might have had a similar experience. That maybe, just maybe, Sokka is as hooked on Zuko as Zuko is on him.

Zuko rubs at the back of his neck and stares at the floor, no longer able to look Sokka in the eye. “That’s on me, I guess. I was, um, working through some stuff. Sorry.”

“Hey,” Sokka says, and Zuko looks at him again. “You don’t have to apologise. Just - I don’t know. Don’t disappear on me.”

Zuko nods silently, consumed by cruel and unforgiving irony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was very much an in-between chapter, before we get into the last 2 which are very plot-heavy. think of it as one of the more complicated powerpoint slide transitions


	5. Chapter 5

Aang only stays long enough to collect some supplies for the rest of his journey and join them for lunch. Ordinarily, Zuko would be thrilled to host his friends for any amount of time, but there’s a strange prickle of tension in the air this afternoon. It nags him, unnamed, until the meal is dwindling to a close and Aang asks:

“Zuko, will this be your first time at the South Pole since the end of the war?”

Zuko blinks at him, dumbfounded. “What?”

“You’re going to the Water Tribe summit, right?”

“What are you talking about? I’m the Firelord, why would I be going?”

Something deadly serious flashes across Katara’s face, so fast Zuko almost doesn’t see it. It’s gone before he can put a name to it.

“Because you and Sokka are- ow!” Aang is cut off by a stamp of Katara’s foot on his. Zuko now understands her earlier fleeting expression as sudden, apocalyptic realisation. She gives Aang a very wide-eyed and harsh-lipped look. The universal sign of _shut your face, and do it yesterday._

“- such good friends?” Aang finishes through what is definitely more grimace than grin.

Zuko remembers suddenly the story of the day Aang learned to earthbend to save Sokka from a hole in the ground. That doesn’t sound like the worst place to be right about now.

“As much as I wish I could stuff him in a trunk and take him with me,” Sokka says, blissfully ignorant of the other conversation going on and the way Zuko stiffens beside him, “I think it might count as kidnapping. And possibly a declaration of war? I’m fuzzy on the requirements for that.”

There’s a kerfuffle of niceties at the palace entrance when they see Aang and Appa off. There are hugs and well wishes and promises to see each other again soon, and one very graciously accepted offer from Sokka to help load up the saddle with Aang’s new supplies. Katara takes the distraction as an opportunity to drag Zuko away out of earshot.

She looks at him, her expression a grave apology, and says, “I didn’t tell him. I swear I didn’t say a word, I don’t know where any of that stuff at lunch came from.”

“Stop,” Zuko says, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I believe you. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure? I can tell him -”

“Katara,” Zuko levels her with his most earnest stare. “It’s _Aang._ It’s fine. He’s - he’s fine. It’s okay.”

Katara worries at her bottom lip. “Have you told Sokka?”

Something awkward twists in Zuko’s gut. There isn’t a simple answer to this question. "That's… complicated."

"Complicated how?" Katara frowns at him.

Everything in him wants to tell her the truth - the whole truth, the real truth - and he almost does, the words fully formed on his tongue, but his breath is stolen by the sight of Sokka grinning as he approaches them, his back to the great cloud of dust Appa throws up as Aang departs.

Katara’s expression when she looks at Zuko tells him she still wants him to give her an answer, but she has the sense not to beg one off him while they have company.

Sokka sidles up to Zuko then, jostling him with an elbow. The casual contact sends a shiver through him, and he has to look at the ground to keep his awkward and involuntary grin a secret. 

“I cleared your schedule,” Sokka tells him. His voice is loud - it has to be, with all the commotion around them - but there’s something in his tone that makes it feel private.

Zuko decides, _fuck it,_ and lets the grin take over his face as he looks back up at Sokka. “Do you even have the authority to do that?”

“Of course I don’t. I can’t believe you’d even ask me that.” There’s laughter in his voice, boyish and charming, and Zuko wants to wrap himself in the sound of it. “But your schedule is clear nonetheless. You’re welcome.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. Fondness creeps into his voice anyway. “Did you have something in mind for the afternoon?”

“No,” Sokka shrugs. There’s something deliberate and pointed about his casualness, like it’s been practiced. “I just thought you’d want it free. You deserve a break.”

The dust is settled now, and Sokka doesn’t have to shout when he adds, “Which is why I also cleared the rest of your week.”

Zuko gapes at him. “I was supposed to meet with -”

“The General can wait another couple of days, Zuko,” Sokka smiles, as easy as breathing. “My sister’s in town. We owe her a good time, given that she’s half the reason you made it through the Ba Sing Se meetings without ending your bloodline.”

He says _we_ like there’s no question about it, like it’s an inevitability. Like it doesn’t make Zuko’s head spin.

Sokka glances over at Katara for the first time since he started talking, and Zuko follows him. Katara is watching them, rapt, her eyes calculating and wild. Zuko realises suddenly that he’d forgotten she was even there.

Katara takes Zuko’s hand and grins at him. “Show me your city, Firelord.”

Zuko looks back at Sokka, and almost misses the way Sokka's eyes linger on Katara’s hand in his. Almost. 

“What do you say, Ambassador?” Zuko says, and Sokka’s eyes snap up to his face. “Will you come sightseeing with us?”

Sokka’s grin matches his sister’s, but doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He falls into step beside Zuko, their shoulders brushing on every other step up to the palace, and says, “I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

It takes an hour to get approval for an impromptu trip to the city. With so much red tape involved, Zuko’s not sure it even _counts_ as impromptu anymore. The excitement of spontaneity is gone by the time they finally leave the palace after spending the majority of that hour trying to dissuade the guards offering their protective services - what they call “protection”, Zuko calls “babysitting”. It takes the threat of permanent dismissal to get them to scale back to just a carriage ride into the city.

Katara insists on a _small_ carriage. She says it’s so they can take narrower streets further into the heart of the marketplace, but Zuko doesn’t trust the smile she gives herself when he ends up on the opposite bench to her with Sokka pressed tight against his side.

The road to the city is not particularly interesting, mostly dusty stretches of sun-scorched grass and rocky fields, until Katara points out the window on Zuko’s side to ask, “What’s that?”

Zuko has made this journey enough times in his life to have a fair idea of what she might be seeing, but all those memories go out the window - proverbial rather than literal, though they might as well - when Sokka leans across him to look out. He’s so far into Zuko’s space already, and then -

Sokka balances himself with a hand on Zuko’s thigh, and Zuko’s mind goes entirely, instantaneously blank. Where there might have been thoughts before, there is now a boundless void.

“It just looks like ruins to me,” Sokka says. And then he has the nerve to look to Zuko for answers, with curiosity-bright eyes and his hand still on Zuko’s thigh and his face so very, very close to Zuko’s.

Zuko’s eyes drift over to Katara. She has that same private smile on her lips, and she is not looking at the other side of the carriage in a way that makes Zuko think she can still see exactly what’s going on.

Zuko’s soul returns to his body suddenly, and he pushes Sokka back into his seat to get a look out the window. Sokka’s hand stays where it is.

Straining to keep his voice even, Zuko tells Katara, “It’s an old temple. Probably to Agni or another spirit, I think. Most of them are.”

Sokka looks at Katara then, and excitement bubbles in his voice. “Do you think we could put up something like that in the South Pole? For Yue?”

Katara frowns, thinking. “I don’t see why not. It might help with negotiations with the Northern Tribe to celebrate her like that.”

They launch into a discussion of Water Tribe relations that lasts the rest of the journey, and Zuko’s mood sinks. He doesn’t need the reminder that Sokka is leaving, that he’s barely got two weeks left with him. He doesn’t speak the rest of the way into the city, and barely listens to their conversation - but Sokka’s hand doesn’t move from his leg until the carriage comes to a final stop. Zuko anchors himself to the touch, reminding himself that Sokka is still here, he’s not going anywhere yet.

When they emerge from the carriage at the edge of the main market square, two things happen one after the other. 

One: a hush falls across the crowd as eyes fall on Firelord Zuko. 

Two: the buzz of chatter resumes when those same eyes slide to Ambassador Sokka beside him.

Zuko smiles. He leans down and says to Katara, whose expression betrays her confusion, “When I’m here on my own, all they see is the crown and the royal robes. When Sokka’s with me, I’m just the guy holding his money.”

Katara laughs. “Good to see the new job hasn’t done away with Sokka’s shopping problem.”

“Almost no one charges the Firelord,” Sokka says, already eyeing one of the busier market stalls, “so it’s not technically shopping.”

He grabs Zuko by the arm and tugs him into the crowd, Katara on their heels. He says, boisterous and joyful, “I think my little sister should get to take advantage of the generosity of our subjects, don’t you, Your Highness?”

Zuko doesn’t say that he’d bankrupt the entire Fire Nation to see Sokka smile, doesn’t say that hearing Sokka say _our subjects_ makes him feel lightheaded, doesn’t say that Sokka’s arm looped in his isn’t helping with that sensation of weightlessness. So many things he doesn’t say. So many things he _can’t_ say. 

“There’s not much in the way of tourist destinations,” Zuko says, eventually, to Katara. With an apology in his voice, he continues, “That wasn’t really a priority the last hundred years or so.”

“I think shopping sounds fun,” Katara says. There’s something crafty in her eyes now, and Zuko doesn’t know what it means. “Being friends with the Firelord has to be good for something.”

The crowd makes way around them. Some people bow, others nod or gape openly at Zuko and his golden headpiece - but no one wants to be the one to make the Firelord wait in line. As soon as they approach the stall Sokka has his eyes on, its patrons scatter. The vendor’s eyes land on Sokka, and the genuine smile etched on his face still surprises Zuko as much as it had the first time he’d gone shopping with Sokka.

Fine leather and decorative wooden carvings are displayed across the stall. Zuko thinks it’s an odd combination, until he sees the thick arms of the vendor and the young man beside him - his son, that much is obvious - and considers the strength needed to procure materials for such delicate goods.

Sokka holds up a wooden Avatar Kyoshi to show Zuko, his grin stretching from ear to ear. Somewhere deep in his chest, Zuko aches to live in the light of that smile.

Distantly, he hears Katara giggle, “You should get that for Suki. Kyoshi Island is on the way to the South Pole, we could deliver it in person.”

Zuko didn’t think it was possible, but Sokka’s grin grows wider. Impulse surges through him, and he looks at the old man behind the stall.

“How many of these do you have?” he asks.

“As many as the Firelord needs,” the man says. The right answer.

Zuko smiles at him, drops a hand onto Sokka’s shoulder. “We’ll take all of them, plus however many more you can make in the next two weeks. Send them to the palace, I’ll take care of the bill from there.”

“Very good, Firelord Zuko. Thank you.”

Sokka’s smile softens at the edges. “Zuko, you -”

“You don’t want the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors thinking the Firelord has a favourite, do you?”

Sokka goes quiet then, just looking at him. Zuko thinks, fleeting and desperate, that he never wants him to stop.

Katara hums at Zuko’s other side. She sounds far away - but then again, so does the rest of the crowd. It seems to rouse Sokka, though, because he tears his eyes from Zuko’s to look at her. His eyes slide away from her just as quickly, to something on a stall further down the line.

“I’m going to -” he says, gesturing. “I have to check that out. I’ll be back.”

He won’t be back any time soon, and they all know that, but Zuko lets him slip away anyway. He’s good at that.

Katara, gripping his arm in a way that reminds him of the noble ladies of Ba Sing Se, pulls him slowly through the crowd toward a street lined with more permanent shops. She asks him, in a breezy and casual voice that makes him wonder about her intentions, “Do you keep track of fashion, Zuko?”

Zuko eyes her, but her expression, save for the small smile tugging on her lips, gives nothing away. “No, not really.”

Katara meets his eye, and her smile turns wickedly saccharine. Zuko suspects that might’ve been the answer she was hoping for. She doesn’t say a word, but pulls more insistently on his arm, dragging him down the street. In the window displays, Zuko catches glimpses of lush robes in deep reds and gleaming golds, glamorous coats and gowns, sparkling jewels on the throats and wrists of mannequins. 

Katara takes him into a store halfway down the street, and introduces herself to the bravest of the staff as the Firelord’s personal stylist. Zuko tries not to notice the way the rest of the customers dart for the door.

“We’re on the hunt for a new look,” Katara explains to the store’s chosen champion, ignoring the woman’s skeptical eyes. “These stuffy royal robes are tired and old-fashioned. We need something fresh. Something modern. This is a new era, and we need our Firelord to reflect that.”

She looks up at Zuko then, an unspoken _play along_ in her eyes. Zuko sighs, and says to the poor woman before them, “Anything you can do to help will be handsomely rewarded.”

Something lights up in the woman’s eyes, and she bows deeply as she says, “Of course, Firelord Zuko.”

She shuffles away, disappearing into the rows of garments, some hung daintily on rails and some folded neatly on tables. Katara squeezes his arm gently, and drifts off to join her, leaving Zuko standing alone in the entryway. 

Several more uniformed women, waved over either by Katara or their colleague, bow to him on their way to help. He hears snippets of conversation between them, Katara’s questions of “Does this come in any other colours?” and “Could I get this one in a larger size?” ringing the loudest through the store. 

One by one, the women vanish into a room behind the checkout counter, each laden with bundles of fabric, until Katara is the only one left on the floor. She returns to Zuko’s side and grins up at him.

“What’s this going to cost me?” he asks.

Her smile doesn’t falter a second as she says, “You don’t want to know.”

The first woman emerges from the back room, beckoning them to the counter. She bows to Zuko as they approach.

“Your items will be sent to the palace straight away, per your stylist’s instructions,” she says. “Please return anything not to your taste, and we will refund you in full. Thank you for your business, Firelord Zuko.”

She bows again, and Zuko takes that as a subtle way of asking them to leave and stop scaring away their real customers. Zuko nods to her, and takes the hint.

Out in the open air again, Zuko glances back up the street toward the market square. He doesn’t know how long they spent inside, but he supposes it wasn’t long enough for Sokka to be quite done with the stalls just yet. He stands corrected, though, when he turns his gaze down the other way and catches a flash of Water Tribe blue in the crowd.

He points, just as Sokka steps into the weapons shop Zuko knows is his favourite. It’s one of the more pricey spots in the city, full of intricate and particular blades and armour adorned with precious metals and stones.

He pulls Katara along with him down the street. Her eyes go wide as they step inside, taking in the deadly extravagance Zuko has grown accustomed to. He’s been here often enough with Sokka that the shine has dulled just a bit.

Sokka spots them when he whirls around to figure out why everyone else is clearing out of the shop. He watches the last of the regular shoppers stumble out with eyes stuck on the Firelord, and mutters to himself, “Every time.”

The owner, a robust man Zuko has known since he was young, calls out to him, “You are bad for business, Firelord Zuko.”

“My choice of ambassador is the reason you’re still _in_ business, Zhen,” Zuko laughs. He catches Sokka’s eye and holds it like a diary holds a secret, until Zhen’s booming laughter shakes the building around them.

Zuko wanders through the shop for a long time, not really looking at anything in particular. Katara makes idle small talk at the counter with Zhen, introducing herself as the waterbending master she is and the personal lifestyle guru to the Firelord she thinks she is. He tells her about the first sword he ever sold Zuko, and how he’d returned a week later complaining that it was too shiny to be practical.

Sokka keeps circling back to one wall display, and Zuko can’t stop noticing him. He walks over to join him on the third or fifth time he stops to admire the twin daggers mounted there. Paper thin blades stretch out from exquisitely carved hilts of sparkling silver, a fine blue stone at the end of each handle. 

Katara and Zhen are quiet, and Zuko can feel their eyes on him as he reaches out to take the blades down from the wall. Sokka’s gaze follows his hands. He takes a step away, testing the balance of the daggers, getting a feel for the weight of them. Sokka meets his eye then, and doesn’t look away as he hands the daggers over to him.

Sokka swipes one dagger through the air, the other swift to follow. The air _whips_ to make way for the blades, a short and satisfying noise. Zuko swears it sounds just like Aang’s bending. 

A low whistle of appreciation escapes Sokka’s lips. The light reflected on the blades bounces around in his eyes, and Zuko almost lets out a whistle of his own.

“Ah,” Zhen says. Even his quiet voice registers as a bellow. “You’ve found the moonstone daggers.”

“They’re incredible,” Sokka breathes. He’s not wrong - but Zuko thinks anything would be beautiful in Sokka’s hands.

“They’re not for sale,” Zhen says. Zuko’s chest tightens at the way Sokka’s face falls.

“Oh,” is all Sokka says. He studies the cloudy blue of the moonstones embedded in the pommels of the blades a moment longer before setting them back onto the wall.

They wander around the shop for a short time more, while Katara has Zhen tell her about the bending scrolls in his collection, but nothing else catches Sokka’s attention quite like the moonstones. 

Zhen bids them farewell when he finishes up with Katara, but something about Sokka’s slightly slumped shoulders as he walks out into the street leaves a bad taste in Zuko’s mouth. He offers Sokka and Katara a clumsy excuse to send them on their way back to the carriage without him, and hangs back in the shop on his own.

He stands in front of the moonstone dagger display long enough that Zhen clears his throat.

Zuko says, in his best Firelord voice, “Name your price.”

“They’re not for sale,” Zhen repeats.

Zuko says again, this time whipping around to look the shopkeeper in the eye, “Name your price.”

Zhen seems to catch on then, because he bows his head to Zuko. His wide frame seems to shrink at the gesture. When he finally names his price, it’s outrageous. More than the daggers are worth. He adds, “I have a potential buyer already lined up, sir. Coming at the end of the week.”

“I’ll give you double if you let me walk out of here with them today,” Zuko says, something righteous swimming in his blood. 

Something like admiration, or perhaps greed, lights up Zhen’s eyes. “Sold.”

Zuko lifts the daggers from the wall, their dazzling shine turned dull as the outside light begins to fade. He tucks them in among his layers and layers of royal robes.

“Thank you, Zhen,” he says, and means it. “You’ll have the money tomorrow.”

He bids the old man farewell, and leaves the shop. Satisfaction tugs on his lips.

Dusk falls like a tree in an empty wood, silent and deafening all at once, as their carriage winds its way out of the city back towards the palace. There’s something sleepy and eerie about the barren plains outside the city, lit a husky brown-orange-gold by the last efforts of the setting sun.

Zuko sits beside Katara on the way back, not trusting himself next to Sokka. The daggers are still in his robes, dangerously close to gutting him with every jostle of the carriage on the road, and he knows he’ll lose grip of the secret of them if Sokka so much as brushes their legs together.

It almost happens, once. The carriage hits a particularly nasty lump in the road and sends them airborne for a moment, before crashing back down into their seats, a messy tangle of feet and knees in the well between benches. 

Sokka’s foot slides up along Zuko’s calf as he rights himself, and Zuko nearly spills every secret he’s ever kept.

Though Katara’s eyes never quite land on his face, Zuko can feel her looking at him and his red cheeks. He thinks he can hear gears turning inside her head, too, and he’s scared to think about what that might mean.

* * *

Zuko seals himself in his study after dinner. He gives the guards at the door strict do-not-disturb instructions, and clarifies for the first - and likely last - time in his life that that includes Sokka, too. 

He ignores the pile of unread scrolls and letters on his desk and looks at the twin daggers resting on top. The moonstones, like eyes of coldest blue, stare back at him.

He watches the daggers for a long time. They don’t move in all the time he sits there, the flickering candlelight dancing along the blades as he considers his next move. 

Sneaking into Sokka’s chambers and leaving them there for him to find won’t be difficult, but there is no anonymity in a gift like this. There’s no one else with the influence or means to get these daggers in the first place, and no one else with motive to give them to Sokka. 

He considers writing a note, a little message of how and why, but it feels too big. Too much like a declaration.

Isn't that what this is, though? A way of saying _I was thinking of you, I am thinking of you, I will be thinking of you?_ A way to tell Sokka that he deserves everything, and Zuko is more than happy to provide?

He twirls one dagger in his hands, the tip of the blade pressed to the pad of one finger as his other hand manipulates it, and nervousness spikes through him. It jolts him to his feet, and then he’s marching to the door with both daggers in hand. 

The guards stationed opposite Sokka’s door give him the usual nod as he approaches, but eye him curiously when he doesn’t go into Sokka’s rooms straight away. They don’t say a word as he stands with his back to the wall beside the doorway and waits. He waits until he hears the sound Sokka’s footsteps heading into his washroom, and then slips inside.

Zuko is in Sokka’s quarters just about every other night, but he’s still surprised every time by just how much of Sokka is here. Half-forgotten shirts and trousers are draped over furniture by the large mirror commissioned specifically for Sokka, shoes and weapons mingle on the floor by the door, his boomerang sits ready for action on a bedside table, and teacups and scrolls and pai sho tiles litter every available surface. 

Zuko breathes in the scent of winter-cold air and sunbaked skin and boy and drying ink and Sokka, and feels the nervousness in him twist into something brand new. 

A sound from the washroom reminds him he only has a short window of time for this mission, and he launches into action. He clears a space on a dresser by the door of the washroom, silent in a way he hasn’t had to be in such a long time, and sets the daggers down in a dainty cross shape.

He peeks through the small crack of the door into the washroom to make sure he hasn’t been seen. He catches a glimpse of the curve of Sokka’s bare back as he bends to wash his face and the pajama bottoms slung low on his hips, and has to clamp a hand over his mouth to stop himself from making any kind of sound at the sight.

Zuko slithers back out into the hall just in time to hear Sokka leave the washroom. He leaves the door to Sokka’s rooms ajar, just enough that he can hear Sokka’s bare feet on the tiles and still remain hidden. Zuko holds his breath, back flat against the wall beside the door again, as he waits for Sokka to find the blades.

The footsteps stop. “What’s -” Sokka starts, and then the truth sets in. Zuko thinks he could probably pinpoint the exact second Sokka makes the connection.

"Oh, _Zuko,"_ Sokka breathes, and Zuko’s hair stands on end. He hears the scrape of metal on metal, the telltale sound of Sokka picking up the daggers, and lets his head bump against the wall as he listens.

“What does this mean, Zuko?” Sokka mutters to himself. Then, in a tone laced with hope and something Zuko doesn’t have a name for, “Does it mean what I think it means?”

Zuko lets out a long, quiet breath. He pushes off the wall and keeps his feet light and silent on the floor as he makes his way back down the hallway away from Sokka’s chambers. He can feel the guards watching him, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He sits in bed that night waiting for the thrill to fade, but it sticks in his blood for hours, stubborn and singing. Those words ring in his ears, seem to echo off the walls.

_Does it mean what I think it means?_

* * *

Zuko tries his best to wear something from the mountain of Katara’s selections every day, to varying degrees of success. Some pieces are clearly much better than others, and his friends have no trouble letting him know.

The first day, he tries a long, modest tunic with his royal robes. When he steps into direct sunlight and nearly melts, Sokka laughs in his face. 

The second day, he loses the robes and tries a different tunic, down to his knees with complicated fastenings down the front. It hangs loosely from his shoulders, the sleeves bunching at his wrists, and the hem stands out far away from the baggy trousers he’s paired with it.

He finds Katara and Sokka in the dining hall, heads bowed close together in whispered conversation. He clears his throat as he approaches, and their eyes snap away from each other to look at him.

Katara frowns in a puzzled sort of way, and glances from Zuko to Sokka and back again, as if to ask _is this a joke?_ Sokka catches her eye and holds it just long enough that Zuko can see some wordless exchange pass between them, and then Sokka buries his head in his hands.

“It’s not as hot as yesterday’s,” Zuko offers, looking down at himself.

“You can say that again,” Katara snickers. Sokka looks up from his hands and glares at her until her smile dies.

“I mean,” Zuko says, “it’s not as warm. I think it breathes a little better.”

“You look like you let Toph pick out your clothes,” Sokka tells him. 

Zuko looks down again. “I don’t think it’s _that_ bad -”

“Let’s stay away from the long tops for now, okay?” Katara says. “Come sit down so I don’t have to look at it.”

On the third day, the last day of Katara’s first week in the palace, he takes her advice.

He spends an hour digging through his options, really trying this time to find something decent enough that his friends won’t be embarrassed to be seen with him, determined to knock the grimace right off Sokka’s face.

He matches loose trousers with a shirt that ends at his waist, and shrugs on a simplified version of the royal robes that hangs light and summery from his shoulders and just brushes his mid-calf. 

In the mirror, it doesn’t look that bad. Then again, he considers, he thought that the last two times.

There’s no one else in the dining hall when he finally makes it down to breakfast, but he has the strangest feeling of being watched _._ On his way out, he catches one of the kitchen staff watching him go and realises it’s not _watched_ he feels, but _ogled._

The feeling lingers as he passes more palace staff on his way through the grounds. He wonders if this is how Sokka feels any time he bares a single inch of his skin in Zuko’s presence. It’s not a totally unpleasant feeling, but it’s uncomfortable enough that he resolves to keep his eyes to himself from now on.

His feet take him to the turtleduck courtyard. There he finds his uncle and Sokka, sitting at the side of the pond, bent studiously over a pai sho table. Iroh hears him coming first, and looks up from the board as Sokka scratches his chin in thought.

Iroh looks Zuko up and down, and gives him a generous smile. “My, Nephew, don’t you clean up well!”

“Thank you, Uncle,” Zuko says, suddenly shy.

Sokka looks away from the board at the sound of his voice. He looks like he’s about to make some sarcastic comment, but whatever it is dies on his tongue when he sees Zuko. His mouth hangs open and his eyes go wide as they snag on Zuko’s bare stomach and the hard wall of muscle there.

This feels different. This isn’t like the proud way Iroh looks at him, or the abstract appreciation of the palace staff. 

No, Sokka’s stare is different. Sokka’s stare is unrelenting _._

He has that same look in his eye that he had that night all those weeks ago when they sparred under the moon: like dinner is about to be served, and Zuko is the only thing on the menu.

If _this_ is how Sokka feels when Zuko looks at him, then Zuko might never take his eyes off him again.

Zuko’s skin feels hot and alert as he sits at the side of the board. He crosses his legs and looks at Sokka. “Who’s winning?”

Sokka’s eyes snap up to meet Zuko’s. He manages to scrape his jaw off the floor, but doesn’t say anything.

“Ambassador Sokka has the upper hand at this moment,” Iroh says, his focus back on the board. There’s a whisper of mischief in his voice as he adds, “Though I think the tide may yet turn in my favour.”

That gets Sokka’s attention. “I’m not done yet!”

Iroh gets a look in his eye that says he knows better and Sokka should too. As they continue their game, Zuko starts to think his uncle might be right, because Sokka’s eyes keep drifting away from the board to look at him. The hunger fades from his gaze, but there’s still an undeniable heat there that makes Zuko want to squirm.

“Excellent game, Ambassador,” Iroh says when they’re done and Sokka has lost spectacularly. He claps Sokka on the shoulder and grins. “You have improved greatly since our last match.”

“Thank you,” Sokka says, and it comes out almost like an accident. Like pure habit. Zuko isn’t sure he’s aware he’s even spoken.

His eyes fly to Zuko again as they stand, as if the game had been a distraction from Zuko and not the other way around. Zuko tries not to feel smug, but he doesn’t try very hard.

It’s in that same breathless tone from the other night that Sokka says to him, “You look really good today.”

Zuko frowns at him. “I don’t look good everyday?”

This is a dangerous game to play, and Zuko barely knows the rules, but the look Sokka gives him makes him think he might be a natural.

“You know you -” Sokka starts, and then there’s lurid colour blooming in his face, and he can’t go on. “Shut up.”

Zuko grins, and looks at his uncle. He finds him watching Sokka with the same kind of attentive curiosity that seems to follow the two of them everywhere.

“Zuko,” he says, still looking at Sokka, “this is the last free afternoon you will have for a while. I wonder if you would join myself and Ambassador Sokka for a nice pot of tea?”

“I’d like that, Uncle,” Zuko says. He looks at Sokka, and finds him already looking back. “Ambassador?”

“Yeah,” Sokka says. “Yes. We should have tea.”

Something about the way he says it sets off a little voice in Zuko’s head, telling him that the _we_ in question doesn’t include Iroh. He wills himself to ignore it, but that hopeful whisper persists, nagging him all the way to the sunlit tea room that looks out onto the gardens.

The tea room isn’t large, but the elegant set of matching metal chairs at the round table and the light from the tall windows make it seem bigger than it is. A stream of water trickles into a stone basin from one of the walls attached to the rest of the palace, clean and fresh and ready to fill the teapot that sits on the table in the centre of the room.

Sitting at the table with Sokka filling the pot from the stream, Zuko can see Katara in the gardens. In another corner is Iroh, picking leaves and petals for the tea. Zuko waves to her, and she returns it with a broad smile.

“Is that my sister?” Sokka asks, settling into the seat beside him. Zuko would’ve sworn the chair was farther away before he sat down, but he doesn’t shy away from the spots where their legs touch under the table.

“She likes the gardens,” Zuko shrugs. “There’s a lot of water. Plus, it’s probably the most colourful spot here. I don’t think the rest of the palace really suits her.”

Sokka hums, and Zuko can feel his eyes on him. When he turns away from the window, Sokka is leaning an elbow on the table with his head resting in his hand, just looking at him. There’s no real shape to his expression, but his eyes are warm and kind and full of a softness Zuko wants to fall into.

Zuko wants to say something, anything to keep Sokka looking at him like that, but no words come to him. So he just keeps looking back. 

The room is perfectly still and silent, but Zuko’s heartbeat is like a symphony in his ears as he holds Sokka’s gaze like he holds the fire in his blood - instinctively, dangerously, like he could combust at any moment.

Sokka opens his mouth, and Zuko somehow knows it’s to whisper, so he leans further into Sokka’s space, and - 

Iroh clears his throat loudly as he plods back into the room, bursting their bubble of quiet. He drops into a third chair on Sokka’s other side, and he seems a mile away compared to the small space between Zuko and Sokka.

Iroh draws the pot over to his side of the table and drops a handful of leaves into the water.

“The heat under a teapot is usually made with spark rocks,” he says to Sokka, and gestures to the green stones hiding among the cups on the table. His smile is wry when he continues, “But we have our own fire here.”

He holds out a hand for Sokka to see, orange flame flickering in his palm like a candle. Sokka watches it with vague interest until Iroh extinguishes it with a flourish. It appears again in the stand, ready to bring the water to boil.

“There is another way,” Iroh says, “that almost lost us our refugee status in Ba Sing Se. It’s quicker and safer, but not as accessible to non-benders - or even firebenders without a great level of control over their power.”

He holds the pot between his hands. “This is your preferred method, is it not, Nephew?”

Zuko nods, and Iroh passes the pot to him before standing.

“Is something wrong, Uncle?” Zuko asks, looking up at him.

“I spoke with Katara in the garden,” he says, “and she insisted I give her a tour of the teas in our collection. You and I have all the time in the world to drink tea, but she is here for such a short while. I am sure your Ambassador will be good company.”

There’s something about his smile as he leaves, the quiet song he hums, that Zuko doesn’t understand. There’s more than meets the eye there, he’s sure of it, but he doesn’t know why.

“And then there were two,” Sokka says.

Zuko looks at him. “Do you - do you still want to have tea?”

“Only if it’s with you,” Sokka says, his voice barely more than a whisper. The words wrap themselves around Zuko’s mind, putting down deep, deep roots.

Zuko keeps looking at Sokka as he heats the tea. It’s a very fine balancing act to let out heat but keep the fire trapped under his skin, and he nearly loses control when Sokka lifts a hand toward him.

“Can I, um -” he tries. “Do you think I could - I mean, would it be -”

Zuko figures out what he’s trying to say, and his heart thunders in his chest. He cools the heat of one hand and takes Sokka’s, guiding him to place his palm on the back of the hand still holding the pot. He settles both hands back under the weight of the pot, and tries to breathe.

“Do you feel it?” Zuko asks, but Sokka’s gasp at the contact is answer enough. 

“You’re so - _warm,_ ” Sokka says, his eyes wide as he watches their hands. “It’s nice.”

Sokka’s touch is feather-light and impossibly gentle, and it nearly drives Zuko to distraction. Zuko glances down at Sokka’s hand on his, and when he looks back up he finds Sokka’s eyes back on him, searching and endlessly blue.

“Yeah,” Zuko says, his voice tight to match the pressure in his chest. “It’s nice.”

They spend a long time just looking, long enough that Zuko starts to feel the room filling up with words unsaid. Long enough that Zuko wants to say the words.

He can’t say them, though. This tea room - this palace, this whole nation - isn’t big enough to hold them.

Sokka disappears behind a slow cloud of steam, drawing Zuko back to reality and the boiling pot in his hands. The same hands still being braced by Sokka’s. Zuko clears his throat.

“Do you want to grab the cups?” he asks, and it comes out a whisper. There’s something fragile and tense about the quiet around them that makes him afraid to raise his voice any louder, afraid to break it and lose it forever.

Sokka takes his hand away, and Zuko swears he feels a chill take its place. He takes two cups from the centre tray and offers them to Zuko. His eyes don’t stray from Zuko’s face as he pours, and Zuko can feel the weight of them on his mouth as he pokes his tongue out to wet his lips, suddenly dry. 

Zuko sets the pot down on the stand, the small flame there keeping the water hot enough that a steady pillar of steam pipes from the spout into the room. He takes the cup Sokka holds out to him, and lets his fingers linger on Sokka’s a moment too long as he does so. 

Somehow, the cup doesn’t hold the same heat as Sokka’s skin on his.

The steam has fogged up the windows, hiding them away from prying eyes, and the privacy makes him feel brave.

Sokka takes a small sip of his tea. Zuko can’t take his eyes off him, transfixed by the bob of his throat as he swallows.

“I’ve been thinking,” Zuko says, even though he hasn’t, not until this moment of absurd fearlessness, “about making some changes.”

Sokka hums, the cup at his mouth keeping him quiet, and raises an eyebrow.

Zuko’s lips quirk into a small smile, and his voice is steadier than he expects. He says, “I’m going to get rid of Firelord Sozin’s law against same-gender relationships.”

Sokka’s eyes widen, and for a moment Zuko can’t tell if it’s in shock or delight or something entirely different. Sokka sets his cup down, spilling a single drop of tea onto the table, and wipes at his mouth.

“Zuko,” he says, and it doesn’t just sound like a name, “that’s - that’s amazing. That’s great news. I’m really glad.”

A weight presses on Zuko’s chest at the sound of those last three words, squeezing around his secrets, and he feels like he might burst. 

“How long have you been thinking about this?” Sokka asks. “I mean, have you talked to the council about it? Your advisors? This is big, Zuko.”

There’s his name again, somehow _more_ when Sokka says it.

“I’ll have to settle down some day,” Zuko says, the words coming without thought now. “It may as well be with someone I actually love.”

He tries not to give too much meaning to the word, but it hangs in the space between them, and Zuko can’t stop himself watching for Sokka’s reaction. He feels it on his skin when understanding settles into Sokka’s eyes.

“So you’re - you like -”

“Yes,” Zuko breathes, and the pressure behind his ribs is gone, melted away into nothing. “Yes, Sokka. I do.”

He thinks he sees a change in the set of Sokka’s shoulders, or some kind of shift in his eyes, and tells himself he’s imagining it.

“Good,” Sokka says. It sounds more like he’s saying it to himself, and Zuko doesn’t understand what it means. There’s a smile on his face, and Zuko doesn’t understand that either, but he thinks he could probably live on it.

They drink tea in silence for a while. The unsaid words are fewer and lighter and less frightening. Zuko wants to say them.

“Katara knows,” he says. “About me, I mean. I told her first. And Uncle knows. I think Aang does, too, but I haven’t told him.”

“And now me,” Sokka says. His voice is far away, and he seems to realise it. He shakes his head suddenly, as if coming back to the room from deep in his own mind. Zuko knows the feeling.

Sokka holds up his cup to Zuko, that same strange smile on his lips, and says, “To positive change.”

Zuko taps the rim of his cup against Sokka’s, shyness creeping in on him. “To brighter futures.”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “You are such a cliché.”

“And you’re not?” Zuko laughs, and it feels better than it ever has.

“I’m an original.”

Nothing is different. They drink their tea and poke fun at each other and let some words stay unsaid, and nothing is different.

That night, Zuko dreams of hands and lips and bright blue eyes and new secrets to share in the dark.

When he wakes, all he can think is _one more week_ and _take action._


	6. Chapter 6

It turns out that overturning a century-old law is not something that can be done overnight. It’s also not something that can be done without drawing a lot of unwanted attention. Zuko learns these facts pretty fast after announcing his decision to his advisory panel.

All five members of the panel give him the same look when he brings it up at their first meeting after his week off with Sokka and Katara. It’s a fascinating mix of shock, horror, political anguish, and morbid curiosity. Their reaction isn’t exactly ideal, but Zuko trusts them almost as much as he trusts his own friends and family.

It’s easy to explain his reasons for wanting to change the law. Far easier than he expects. He tells them the truth - well, most of it. 

He tells them that if the time ever comes for them to arrange a political marriage for him, it won’t be to a woman. He tells them that if that should happen, he at least wants to have a chance at love.

He doesn’t tell them that he thinks he’s already found it.

When Zuko talks about the meeting at lunch right after, Sokka says, “You could do it overnight. You could write a bill or something and just not tell anyone. You’re the Firelord. What are they gonna do, tell you no?”

There’s something bright and fluttery rising in his chest at Sokka’s eagerness, but Zuko levels him with a stare. “That kind of thinking is how my father ended up calling himself the Phoenix King.”

Sokka scrunches up his nose. “Is he still doing that? That’s embarrassing.”

“He’s down in the dungeons if you want to ask him yourself.”

“As much as I’d love to have a nice _chat_ with your father,” Sokka says, his sharp grin all teeth, “I’m not sure he’d be happy to give someone like me the time of day.”

There’s a savage sort of wickedness to his tone that does bad things to Zuko’s ability to form rational thoughts, and he’s so busy trying to suppress the urge to leap across the table at Sokka that he almost doesn’t even notice the way he says _someone like me._

But he does notice, and those three words stick in his head for the rest of the afternoon, cutting through every other thought he has, no matter how important.

His time off with Sokka and Katara and his uncle was barely a week, but after just a single day back in meetings and council sessions and discussions of all things from trade to welfare to military spending to school curriculums, it feels like he never left. That first day, he barely has a second to himself, nevermind the hours he got to spend in the company of his friends just days before.

By the time dusk falls on that first long day of meetings - all of which he spends thinking about the fact that Sokka leaves in five days - he starts to forget what it feels like to be happy.

It takes a full hour of General Hong’s inane ranting for Zuko to realise that that’s what it was. For those five gorgeous days without any work, he was _happy_. 

He was happy to be teased mercilessly by Katara for his clothes, he was happy to sit in comfortable silence with his uncle, he was happy to have his heart rate triple every time he made Sokka laugh. 

Happy to pretend that it wouldn’t all be gone at the end of this week.

His second day back, all anyone he meets with wants to talk about is his proposed change to the law. It seems to be all anyone else wants to talk about, too.

It’s not that he expected his advisors to stay quiet for long - he didn’t swear them to secrecy like he did his friends, because this isn’t just a personal matter anymore, it’s a political one - but he didn’t think it would get out this fast.

Whispers seem to follow Zuko everywhere he goes. It feels like everywhere he looks, a hushed discussion is taking place, and more often than not, the whispering involves a great many furtive glances over at him. 

Granted, a lot of it’s being done by Katara and Iroh and it stops as soon as he gets too close, but that doesn’t exactly put him at ease, either.

He’s not sure the information circulating is the full truth of what he told his advisors. People know that he wants to get rid of an old law, and they know which one, but not everyone seems to know - or to have guessed - his reasons.

This is how he ends up grinding his teeth and clenching his fists for the duration of a meeting with the heads of three of the most powerful families in the city, who show up at the palace just before dinner demanding an audience with the Firelord.

Sokka sits at his side through the whole ordeal, his expression cool and placid, while old men born into older money take turns saying words like “unnatural” and “abomination” and “disgrace”. Out of the corner of his eye, Zuko watches him, the picture of poise, and wishes he could have that kind of control over himself.

With every word they spit in his direction, Zuko’s blood boils a degree higher.

These men don’t know that the words they’re using apply to their Firelord - and if they do, they don’t care. Zuko can’t tell if that makes it better or worse, only that he wants to scream in their faces to see sense. 

Zuko is tired. He’s hungry, he’s furious, he’s offended, he’s exhausted. He is so many things, but at this moment, in this grand meeting hall with its massive arching ceilings and wide open spaces being filled by the hate spewing from these men, patient is not one of them. He doesn’t know if he’ll last until the natural end of this meeting, not unless -

Under the table, where no one can see, Sokka grabs his hand. Their fingers weave together seamlessly.

He doesn’t look away from the man currently speaking, either for fear of giving away the secret or for the sake of getting them out of here as soon as possible, but Zuko does. Zuko looks at him, the side of his quiet, stormless face, and wishes he didn’t have to leave.

Sokka squeezes, still not looking away, and Zuko’s rage starts to ease. 

The old man is still talking, and Zuko looks back at him. With a clearer head, Zuko is able to place his face as one he used to see at banquets thrown in honour of victories during the war as a child. He remembers the spineless way this man would bow at the feet of his father, remembers thinking that this man would likely scrub the palace floors with his tongue if it meant the Firelord might favour him. How times change.

Sokka rubs his thumb in a small circle around one of Zuko’s knuckles, and Zuko finds his anger gone entirely, replaced by something that feels like hot air in his chest. It takes everything he has not to look at him again.

When the last old man - they gave their names when they arrived, but Zuko honestly doesn’t care enough to remember - is finished with his tirade, and they’re all looking at him expectantly, and Sokka is squeezing his hand again, Zuko takes a deep breath.

“Is that all?” Zuko asks, surprised by his own even tone.

One man spits, “What do you mean, is that all?”

Zuko smiles pleasantly, Sokka’s hand still gripping his under the table. “Are you finished speaking?”

The men look at each other in confusion, clearly unsure where this is going. The same man says, “I suppose so.”

“Excellent,” Zuko says, releasing Sokka’s hand to come to his feet. “Thank you for your time and energy, gentlemen. I trust you can see yourselves out? Or will you be needing an escort?”

“That’s it?” a second man balks. “You don’t say a word the entire time, and now we’re being dismissed?”

“That’s correct.” Zuko stands a little straighter, a little taller, and gives each of the men in front of him a turn on the business end of the Firelord glare he’s been perfecting for the last few months. There’s fury in his eyes, he can feel it burning under his skin, edging into his throat as he fights to stay dignified.

Zuko glances at Sokka, and sees he’s lost that blank look of calm and replaced it with a sour downward curl to his mouth and eyes like daggers. 

“I have listened to your words,” Zuko says, and he’s starting to want to tear his hair out again, “and now I am asking you to leave my presence before I have you removed.”

They don’t stick around for long after that.

The second the doors shut behind them, Zuko collapses into his seat again. He lets out a long breath, deflating like a balloon, and keeps letting it out until Sokka intervenes. He grabs Zuko by the shoulders and pulls him against his chest, sliding one hand around to cup the back of his neck and hold him there.

Zuko starts to breathe again, the scent of sweat and Sokka and comfort, as he buries his face in Sokka’s neck. His arms come to life and snake around Sokka’s waist. The angle is awkward, but he feels safe and calm and he wants to stay here for a hundred years.

“You’re okay, Zuko,” Sokka says. “You’re okay.”

Zuko feels the sound of his voice in his bones. He pulls back to look at him, and just about melts at the way Sokka looks back. He nearly says everything, right there. It’s the kind of look that makes him want to tell the truth. 

Sokka’s eyes drop to Zuko’s lips and fly back up again, and then it’s a different look. The kind of look that makes Zuko want to use his mouth for something else entirely.

He almost does it. He almost leans in, the words _tell me no_ on his tongue, ready to ruin everything because of a look. Instead, he panics, and says, "I'm starving."

Sokka huffs out an incredulous breath, his mouth curving up into a smile. He says, "So let's get dinner," but his hands are still on Zuko, holding him. Saving him.

Zuko drops his head onto Sokka's shoulder and sighs, "Thank you."

They go to dinner, and Sokka sits close to him, and all Zuko can think about is how Sokka's hand fit into his like it was nothing. Like it was made for him.

* * *

It takes another two days to get the advisory panel and council to come to an agreement. Two days of meetings spent thinking about how Sokka’s hand felt in his, instead of arguing his position. Two days of wasting away in his study thinking about the feeling of Sokka’s eyes on his mouth and what it might be like to feel his lips there, instead of going over minutes and notes from the meetings he was too distracted to pay attention to earlier.

Zuko isn’t there when they reach a decision, he’s holed up in his study trying to draft a speech to support his stance. Well - that’s what he says he’s doing. 

The moon outside is high, bright and almost full against the black sky, and the candles are burning low. He’s starting to consider turning in for the night when -

The door bursts open. Almost as loud as the slam of it against the wall, is the gleeful voice that calls out to him, “Firelord Zuko, do we have news for you!”

Zuko is on his feet in an instant, a knife pulled from a holster on the underside of the desk in his hand. 

Sokka and Katara blink at him for a moment, until Katara smacks her brother’s arm.

“I told you we should’ve knocked!” she hisses at him.

“That knife is new!” Sokka hisses back. “How was I supposed to know he’d have a knife? Why do you have a knife?”

This last part is directed at Zuko, and said much louder than the rest.

Zuko relaxes, and sheathes the knife back under the desk. “It’s for intruders.”

“You get many of those in these parts? I couldn’t help noticing the _six guards_ you have outside your door - _none_ of whom are the chatty type, by the way, they’re a real tough crowd -”

“Sokka.” Katara glares at him. “The _news?_ You said you wanted to tell him, so tell him. Before I rip out your tongue and you can’t.”

Sokka rolls his eyes at her. “You’re always so dramatic, you know that? No wonder you two get along so well -”

“Sokka!”

“Fine!” He steps closer to Zuko - closer than he needs to, but Zuko’s not about to complain - and hands him what might once have been a scroll, but is now just a curly piece of paper. 

Zuko looks at him and doesn’t read it. “You’re intercepting my mail now?”

“No, dummy,” Sokka says, and his face lights up in that way only Zuko seems to bring out. “The council made a decision. They’re changing the law.”

Zuko stares at him and the dazzling grin spreading across his face. His knees start to feel weak, and for once, that smile isn’t the reason.

He looks down at the paper in his hand, and it’s all there. The ink is barely dry.

_The council has voted in favour of removing all legal restrictions on same-gender relationships, and will begin drafting new anti-discrimination legislation in the morning. The council extends an invitation to the Firelord to oversee proceedings, and anticipates his presence at tomorrow’s meeting._

“We met the messenger on the way to my chambers,” Sokka says. “The same one that told you about those old guys coming to see u- _you,_ from the other night. I stopped him, he said he had news from the council, and I figured no matter what it was you’d prefer to see a friendly face.”

“Faces,” Katara corrects him. She could be on the other side of the world, for all Zuko hears her.

“Yeah, faces,” Sokka amends. Zuko can feel their eyes on him, watching. Waiting. 

Zuko looks up from the page at Sokka again, and he can feel something stinging at his eyes and in his throat. “They -”

“Yeah, Zuko,” Sokka says. “They did.”

Zuko reaches out and finds Sokka is already waiting for him. He slumps against Sokka’s chest, and those strong arms hold him around his waist, hands finding homes at his sides. Zuko’s arms wrap around Sokka’s neck to hold himself up, and suddenly there’s no space at all between their bodies.

Into Sokka’s shoulder, Zuko says, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Sokka laughs, and Zuko feels the vibration of it like it came from inside his own chest. “This is all you, Zuko.”

There’s another hand on his shoulder then. Katara, reminding him that she’s in the room. Reminding him that he can’t say everything he wants to say, not now, not with her here.

He _wants_ to say it, though. He wants to say it all. Every secret, every thought he’s had in the dark, every too-heavy word in his heart.

He lets Katara’s touch ground him, and he says, “You helped,” instead of all the other things he wishes he could say.

Sokka says, “We should celebrate,” so quietly that Zuko wonders just how inclusive that _we_ really is.

Zuko opens his mouth to say yes, yes, a thousand times yes, but all that comes out is a yawn. Sokka laughs, a soft little thing, and it echoes inside Zuko’s mind long after the room swallows the sound of it.

“Zuko is right,” Katara says, and he wishes he wasn’t, “it’s too late for that tonight. He’s probably exhausted and you’re - you know the packing won’t start itself, Sokka.”

“Packing?” Zuko asks dumbly, and horror slips into the cracks of his ribcage as he realises that in the mess of all these meetings, he’s lost another two days - which means Sokka is leaving in three. 

“Packing,” Sokka says, and there’s a subtle sadness in his tone, one that Zuko doesn’t think he’d notice if he weren’t still pressed against him. He tries to push back, to step out of Sokka’s space, but he barely makes it an inch before Sokka is tightening his hold and pulling him closer, closer, closer. Zuko is all too glad to go.

“That’s what we were on our way to do when we met that messenger,” Katara explains. Zuko can hear the smile in her voice as she continues, “Sokka’s been putting it off for so long. We should’ve started days ago, but you know how he gets when he doesn’t want to do something -”

“I don’t _get_ like anything,” Sokka protests, but all Zuko can think is that he doesn’t want Sokka to pack, either.

But he’s not allowed to want that, so he worms out of Sokka’s grasp and tries not to mourn the loss of contact. His blood is still rushing from the news, and he feels powerful and weak all at once as he cups his hands at the sides of Sokka’s face.

“Go pack,” he says, and pretends not to see hope die in Sokka’s eyes at the words, “and I’ll see if the council will let you sit in on the meeting in the morning.”

There’s a flicker of something else in Sokka’s eyes, something that looks like hesitation, and Zuko really needs him out of here. Sokka grabs one of his wrists, and the touch is like a branding iron.

“Go,” Zuko says again. _Before I do something stupid,_ he thinks.

Sokka huffs a sigh and rolls his eyes, but he lets go of Zuko and walks out the door. Zuko misses him like a limb.

Katara lingers in the doorway on her way out. She says, “I’m really happy for you, Zuko.”

There’s an edge to her voice, like she’s not talking about what Zuko thinks she is. He doesn’t know what else she could mean - well, that’s not strictly true. There is _one_ other thing she could be trying to convey, but even at his most optimistic Zuko has never let himself consider _that._

Katara smiles at him, a gentle and understanding thing, and Zuko starts to think maybe he should open his mind a little more.

* * *

The council doesn’t let Sokka into the meeting. 

His face falls when they tell him, and Zuko is about to put his Firelord foot down when Sokka rights himself with a charming smile and a soft touch of Zuko’s arm. Even through his layers of royal robes, Zuko can feel it as if Sokka’s hand is on his bare skin.

“Go get ‘em, hotman,” Sokka says. “Come find me when you get out.”

Someone inside the council chambers calls out to him, and Zuko goes, with a last glance over his shoulder at Sokka. There’s something sad about the way he holds up his hand to wave, but the smile on his face is a beam of proud light before he turns on his heel and stalks away down the hall.

The meeting itself is long and arduous, and Zuko wants to end it prematurely more than once. He knows he can’t, not when there are lives - his own included - hanging in the balance, but frustration at the constant back and forth arguing digs into his skin like a set of teeth. 

They don’t let out for lunch. As much as it pains him to do it, Zuko knows there’s too much at stake to risk losing their momentum by breaking up, so he sends a messenger to tell the kitchen to serve their food in the chambers. He sends her out again to let Sokka and Katara know he’ll see them at dinner instead. 

When it starts to look like dinner is off the cards, too, Zuko finds his messenger already waiting with a response to a note he hasn’t even sent yet. She hands it to him, and he can’t help the heat that flares in his cheeks or the smile that breaks out on his face.

_Gardens at midnight. Don’t be late._

It’s not signed, but Zuko would know Katara’s clean lines anywhere.

The legislation is outlined most of the way by the time night begins to fall. The council assures Zuko they don’t need him for the session in the morning but that he is welcome to attend anyway, and Zuko feels good about saying no.

He feels good about all of it. Tired down to his bones, yes, but good. For the first time since taking the throne, he feels _good_ about the changes he’s making to his nation. For the first time, it really feels like he’s the one making the change, not the Firelord. 

The council stands to bow him out of the meeting, and he races to his chambers as soon as the door is shut behind him. 

He’s been wearing these stuffy robes all day, and something instinctive tells him to dress to impress. He doesn’t know who exactly it is he’s hoping to impress in the gardens with Katara, but he spends a long time in front of the mirror anyway, until he settles on something similar to the combination he wore to the tearoom.

It’s not as hot in the gardens as it is the rest of the palace, and the cool air on his exposed abdomen sends a shiver down his spine. The note didn’t give a specific meeting place, so he meanders through the winding pathways, green leaves painted a ghostly white under the full moon.

He comes to a clearing, a patch of grass that grows tall and busy with wildflowers, and there’s Sokka, lying flat on a blanket and gazing at the sky. Zuko stops in his tracks just to look at him.

His face is relaxed and handsome, the heads of the wildflowers around him dancing shadows across his features by the light from above. A slight breeze ripples the fabric of his shirt, a light and flowing thing with a neckline so scandalously deep Zuko feels an urge to avert his gaze to - what, protect Sokka’s modesty? There is nothing modest about a cut like that. The grand expanse of his bare chest leaves Zuko feeling indecent.

This is a rare thing, this freedom to stare, and it doesn’t last long. 

Sokka glances around himself. Zuko tries to act like he’s only just arrived, but by the sly grin that splits across Sokka’s face as he sits up, he knows he’s unconvincing at best.

“Firelord Zuko,” Sokka says, his tone half mocking and half something else entirely, “won’t you join me?”

He pats the space beside him. It’s not a big blanket, the tall flowers acting almost like walls around it, but it’s inviting. Beckoning.

Zuko sits, and Sokka shuffles closer to him, close enough that their legs touch and Zuko can feel the heat of his skin.

“We’re celebrating,” Sokka says, and it’s only then that Zuko notices the basket at his feet. A bottle of something dangerous peeks out, and Sokka’s smile turns sharp and alluring.

“Where’s Katara?” Zuko asks, but in truth he doesn’t want to know. The way Sokka is looking at him right now, with mischief and trouble in his eyes, makes Zuko hope he never sees another soul as long as he lives.

“Katara?” Sokka’s eyes turn quizzical. “Why would Katara be here?”

“Because of the -”

“Oh! The note, right,” Sokka laughs. “Katara wrote the note, but she’s - she’s not coming. This is just me and you.”

“Good.” The word escapes from Zuko’s mouth before he has time to catch it. That doesn’t bode well, if the bottle in the basket is what he thinks it is.

Sokka ducks his head like he's embarrassed, and their shoulders brush together, and Zuko wonders what he has to do to keep Sokka this close to him the rest of the night. The answer is nothing, apparently, because Sokka doesn't move away when he meets Zuko's gaze again, looking up at him through thick lashes that leave shadows like spiders on his cheeks. 

Zuko wants to touch his face. He keeps his hands to himself.

“What’s in the basket?” he asks. His voice is quiet, afraid to disturb too much of the air around them in case something - anything - changes.

“I don’t know,” Sokka says. “Your uncle gave it to me while I was on my way out and told me to show you a good time. I didn’t ask questions.”

He moves up onto his knees to root through the basket, his back blocking Zuko’s line of sight and keeping the contents a surprise. Zuko doesn’t mind all that much; the view is still fine from where he’s sitting.

Sokka glances over his shoulder. “This is a damn feast, Zuko.”

One by one, he spreads the goods out across the blanket. There are ripe, red fruits, fire flake crackers with small jars of dipping sauces, delicately frosted cakes, and - last but not least - a bottle of sake.

“Uncle really went all out,” Zuko says, stunned. 

“Where to start?” Sokka asks, but he’s already reaching for the sake. He digs two cups out of the basket and hands one to Zuko. Their fingers brush, just for the tiniest second, and Zuko feels every drop of exhaustion in him evaporate. He is wide awake.

He watches Sokka’s face for some kind of reaction, and Sokka doesn’t look at him, but his other hand shakes a little as he pours. 

Zuko keeps watching Sokka’s face, even as he sets the bottle down at his side and reclines to rest his weight on an elbow. In the full moonlight, Sokka’s skin glows blue, and his eyes are a colour Zuko could drown in. Sokka looks up at him, his lips parted in that easy smile, and Zuko thinks that he just might.

Sokka taps the rim of his cup to Zuko’s, and neither of them say a word. There’s something oddly intimate about all of it - the burn of the alcohol as they sip from their cups, the way Sokka’s body curves toward him like a crescent, the quiet hum of life in the gardens filling the silence between them, the curl of Sokka’s smile behind his cup as he watches Zuko right back.

Sokka takes a too-big sip and Zuko’s train of thought comes to a screeching halt. Sokka sets his cup down as he coughs, a harsh wince cracking the smile in his eyes.

He glares down at the bottle, then flicks his eyes back up to Zuko’s. “That stuff is _nasty._ ”

Zuko laughs, and Sokka smacks a fist to his chest as he breathes through it. All the gesture does is draw Zuko’s attention to the miles and miles of skin exposed by Sokka’s shirt. He feels his laughter die in his throat as he swallows thickly around it.

If Sokka notices the way Zuko’s eyes roam over every inch of him, he doesn’t mention it. He picks up his cup and takes a smaller sip and says, “Gets the job done, though.”

Zuko knocks back his cup in a single gulp, just for a reason to tear his gaze from Sokka’s collarbone. It burns, but he’s been used to his insides being lit on fire since the first time he managed to make Sokka smile.

Sokka shoves his shoulder. “Show off.”

Zuko reaches for a ribbon-tied container of fruit. He tugs, and the bow comes apart easily, the ends of the ribbon cascading down the sides of his hand as he holds the rest in place under the container. He shuffles through the fruits - bright pink and purple berries and gorgeous round cherries - until he finds one he fancies, and then offers the container to Sokka.

Sokka, corking the bottle again after filling Zuko’s cup, glances between the container and Zuko, a sly smile crawling across his face. He reaches out and plucks the cherry from Zuko’s other hand by the stem and drops it into his mouth.

Zuko can’t do anything but stare. He’s vacantly aware of his own sharp intake of breath, but the way Sokka rips the stem off, his lips puckering as the fruit pushes against them, is so obscenely distracting that Zuko doesn’t have it in himself to care. 

A shiver runs through him, and it has nothing to do with the wind kicking up.

Sokka says, “Thanks,” when he’s done, in a voice like silk and dusk. Zuko clears his throat, and sets the fruit down before he lets them drop. Heat blooms under his skin, racing up from under his collar into his face.

He clears his throat again and asks, “How’s packing going?”

“I _hate_ packing,” Sokka groans, his head lolling forward, so close that Zuko can see flyaway hairs spring from his wolftail. The single, thin braid is back, Zuko notices, and he wants to touch it.

They pick at the food and drink deeply from the bottle while Sokka explains the intricacies of his hatred for packing. Eventually, Zuko gives up on staying upright, and closes his eyes as he stretches flat on his back, letting Sokka’s voice wash over him. He’s starting to feel the alcohol now; it doesn’t burn so keenly anymore, and his limbs have gone loose and languid.

It takes a while for Zuko to notice that Sokka isn’t talking anymore. He opens his eyes to find Sokka in his same half-up-half-down position, just staring at him from above. His eyes are depthless and pure moonlight blue and full of something Zuko is too scared to name.

Zuko sits up, resting on his elbows, and Sokka doesn’t move. He’s so close now that Zuko can feel Sokka’s breath on his face and the way it stutters as Zuko licks his lips, but still Sokka doesn’t move.

“Zuko,” he says, and his voice sounds too small and too big all at once. “You know I don’t want to leave, don’t you?”

Zuko doesn't say anything, his heart like a hurricane in his chest. 

Sokka sways forward, further into Zuko's space, close enough that his forehead makes contact with Zuko's temple. Zuko wonders if he can feel the heavy pound of his pulse there, if he can feel the same electricity under his skin every time they touch. His eyes flutter closed, and he surrenders to the sensation.

"You know you're the reason, right?" Sokka's breath ghosts at the corner of Zuko's mouth.

Zuko wants to kiss him. 

Sokka says, "Zuko, I -" and cuts himself off, and the way he says his name makes Zuko want to kiss him so badly it hurts. It makes Zuko want to kiss him _until_ it hurts.

Sokka’s free hand comes up to cup Zuko’s face. His thumb swipes across the harsh skin of Zuko’s scarred cheek, and -

It’s all too much. Zuko doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol in his system heightening everything, but it’s all too soft, too tender, too overwhelming. Zuko wants all of it - the touches, the words, the breath on his skin, the barely-there whisper of a kiss - but he wants it too much.

He leans into Sokka’s touch, just for the briefest, most blissful of moments. He lets himself have this gorgeous dream of careful fingertips on the damaged parts of him, before he remembers through the fog of sake that it’s not his to keep.

He pulls away, dropping down onto his back again. He doesn’t look at Sokka. Shame floods every one of his senses as Sokka’s whisper of, “Oh,” meets his ear and breaks his heart.

Zuko says, into the black sky above and against every instinct of self-preservation he has, “I wish you could stay here with me.”

Sokka does something terrible then, just as Zuko gathers the nerve to look at him. He shuffles down the blanket and collapses against Zuko, his head falling on Zuko’s chest and an arm draping across his waist. He rubs tiny circles into the skin at Zuko’s side, just above his hips, and Zuko can’t breathe. He can’t do anything but feel every part of his body that touches Sokka’s.

Sokka whispers, “Tell me to stop,” and Zuko aches, a wretched burning misery deep in his bones, because he knows he won’t. He can’t, not now. Not when he knows that this is all he’ll get to have, that Sokka leaves in two days, that none of this means the same to Sokka as it does to him.

Against his better judgement, Zuko lifts his arm to make room for Sokka to press in further, and Sokka does. He presses closer, closer, closer, until all there is in the world is Sokka flush against him and the feather touch of his fingertips tracing patterns in his skin.

Zuko says to the moon, a light in the dark, “Would you stay if I asked you to?”

“Maybe,” Sokka says. “Are you asking me to, Zuko?”

Zuko stares at the moon, full and luminous, a single spot of blinding white in the inky void of night sky, and doesn’t say a word. A quiet voice, confident and hushed all at once, claws from the depths of his aching heart and whispers a single word in his ear:

_Maybe._

* * *

Sokka leaves tomorrow. 

The morning council meeting is chaos, and sets them back weeks where only days of progress had been made.

Zuko is plagued by _maybe._

 _Maybe_ Sokka would stay if Zuko asked. _Maybe_ Zuko is asking. _Maybe_ he can restore some good to the Fire Nation name. _Maybe_ he can change the lives of his people for the better.

 _Maybe_ Sokka would’ve kissed him last night if he’d been brave enough to let him.

Halfway through the morning council session he turned down the day before, he gets called in to settle a dispute. He doesn’t leave the council chamber until long after sundown, his head nearly splitting in half with a headache.

His council is in disagreement over who in their nation should get to freely express their love, and all Zuko can think as the doors shut behind him is that this time tomorrow, Sokka will be long gone.

This is their last day, and it’s already over. After Sokka sets sail tomorrow, Zuko will be left with just the words _maybe_ and _almost_ for what could be weeks, months, forever.

Sokka is probably still up packing, even at this late hour, but Zuko can’t bring himself to find out. He stops, briefly, outside his door, and can’t remember deciding to come this way in the first place. There are no sounds from inside, no signs of life, so he supposes Sokka is already asleep. The guards don’t say a word to him, though one looks like he wants to.

He stalks through the halls of the palace like a phantom, watching the shadows he casts change shape as he passes each torch, and finds himself at the door of his uncle’s chambers. This wasn’t a conscious decision, either, but it’s where he needs to be.

He nods to the guards stationed either side of the door, and knocks, tentative. 

Iroh opens the door, already dressed for bed, and doesn’t look surprised to see him. He takes in the look on Zuko’s face and the frustrated mess of his hair and robes, and frowns sympathetically.

“I was just about to put on some tea,” he says, and disappears into the room.

Zuko lets out a long breath and steps inside. He closes the door behind him and leans against it for a moment, watching his uncle as he fusses with a pot that has clearly already been used this evening.

Iroh offers the seat opposite him at a small table tucked into one corner of the room.

Zuko sits, and says, “You’ve already had your tea for the night.”

“Yes,” Iroh says, “but I know a man in need of a cup of calming jasmine when I see one.”

Zuko huffs a laugh, and it comes out sad and pitiful. “I guess I do.”

“What is it that troubles you, Zuko?” Iroh asks. He pours one cup for Zuko and tops up his own.

When his uncle says it, Zuko just hears his name. It’s not like the way Sokka says it and makes it more than it is. 

When Sokka says _Zuko,_ it’s not just a name. It’s the feeling in his chest when Sokka laughs at something he said, it’s _positive change,_ it’s a hundred nights spent in opposite corners of Zuko’s study reading until they can’t make sense of the words anymore, it’s _maybe._

“Two days ago, the council was unanimously in favour of getting rid of that damned law,” Zuko says, because the whole truth is too big to start with. “And now some of them don’t know what they want. They’re having second thoughts.”

“Are you having second thoughts?” Iroh asks. His tone is vague, like he knows there’s something else at play here.

“Never,” Zuko says.

“Then it is your job to show these people you mean business,” Iroh says. “You cannot live on hope alone. At some point, you must take a stand, one way or the other.”

On a dresser behind his uncle, a candle flickers once, twice, three times - and then the flame dies, the wick too short to support it any longer.

“I can’t rush this, Uncle,” Zuko says. “I have to do it _right._ There’s too much at stake.”

“There is a difference between _rushing_ and _making progress,_ Zuko.” Iroh sips from his cup, steam disappearing into his mouth the same way mist rolls down a hill. 

Zuko drinks deeply from his cup, reveling in the scorch of it on his tongue.

“Tell me, how was your celebration with Ambassador Sokka?” Iroh asks, and Zuko nearly chokes. “I hope my basket went down well. It would be a shame for a shoddy picnic to be the last thing he has to remember me by in the South Pole.”

Zuko can’t speak for a long time. He stares into his cup, at the leaves resting at the bottom, and doesn’t speak. The spark rock fire beneath the pot dwindles with every passing minute. He drinks the last of the tea, and now nothing but the leaves remain, stuck to the cup like a habit. 

Iroh takes the cup from him but doesn’t refill it. He sets it to the side and waits. Behind him, another candle drips wax onto the dresser. It hits the wood with a quiet _tip, tip, tip._

Zuko buries his head in his hands. “I’m in love with him, Uncle.”

Iroh hums. “Yes, I think you are.”

He says it like it’s nothing. Zuko knows it’s not nothing, because it’s everything - it’s everything he’s kept secret for months, everything he’s kept secret for _years,_ never giving a voice but always, _always_ feeling - but maybe it doesn’t have to be either. Maybe this is something that can just _be._

And where has he heard that before?

“He’s leaving tomorrow,” Zuko says, and he looks up at his uncle. “He’s _leaving._ And I’m -”

“Here, talking to an old man?”

“I’m here, talking to an old man, and I love him. I _love_ him, Uncle.”

Zuko stands suddenly, the table rattling gently as his knee grazes the edge on its way to straightening. The sensation barely registers on his skin. His blood is a raging river, rushing through his veins and pounding in his ears.

He looks down at his uncle, still sitting at the table. “What do I do?”

“It is much too late to do anything now,” Iroh starts to chuckle, but corrects himself when he sees the frantic fear that leaps into Zuko’s eyes. “It’s the middle of the night, Zuko. You will have time to be brave in the morning.”

He’s right, of course, but Zuko needs somewhere to put this nervous energy. He starts to wring his hands, but that’s not enough, so he starts pacing. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth, his mind going a mile a minute.

“What do I _do,_ Uncle?” he asks again, his hands coming up to run through his already disheveled hair. “He’s leaving tomorrow, and I - what do I do?”

“I have already given you the answer to that question, Zuko,” Iroh says. His voice is unfathomably calm, and Zuko can’t comprehend how he can be so relaxed at a time like this. 

He keeps pacing, even as he looks at his uncle for clarity.

Iroh says, simply, and with absolute certainty, “Be brave.”

Zuko stops dead in his tracks. His hands still, and his shoulders sag. “How?”

Iroh looks at him, and Zuko knows the answer long before he finally says, “When the time comes, you will know. Be _brave,_ Zuko. Be _bold."_

* * *

Zuko rises with the sun, and Sokka’s ship is already being loaded.

Every breath he takes is a deep one, grounding him, reminding him that Sokka doesn’t leave until noon. He still has time to figure out how to be brave.

He gets ushered into a meeting the second he steps foot outside his door, without even a chance to get breakfast. It’s urgent, apparently, enough that he just about has to run to keep up with his escort.

Inside the council chambers, it’s mayhem. The door swings open and Zuko is hit with a wall of sound. Discussion among the council members ranges from spirited debate to outright shouting match, and Zuko gets the feeling he’s not here to provide his opinion.

The room falls silent as he steps in. He takes his seat at the head of the table, and watches as several eyes slide from him to the floor as the council is shamed into silence. The quiet isn’t comfortable.

“I don’t want to be here just to play referee,” Zuko says. “I have better things to do with my morning than protect the feelings of those who use this amendment to our nation’s laws as an excuse to give voice to bigotry they’ve grown used to hiding up their sleeve.”

Several more eyes dart to the floor.

“So,” Zuko continues, “if we can settle our differences, this may turn out to be a productive morning. If you feel your differences cannot be settled on this matter, let me know, and I’ll see if I can find any job openings elsewhere in the city. Do I make myself clear?”

He slumps against the high back of his chair - not a throne as his father would’ve used, but an ordinary _chair_ \- and waves a hand to a councilwoman he knows to be reasonable. 

“Proceed,” he says, and promptly tunes out of the meeting.

The rest of the morning goes on in the same way: members of the council state their cases, arguing them more politely than they had when he wasn’t in the room, and Zuko is distracted by the anticipatory itch under his skin.

He is aware of every second passing, every moment that slips out of his reach as time marches on and on and on. He hasn’t eaten, he’s barely slept, and he hasn’t had his chance to be brave yet - and with every minute, he can feel that window closing.

He sits at the head of that table for an hour, maybe two, until the voices of the council all start to run into one long drone, a gnat in his ear as he tries to piece together his fractured and hectic thoughts. He only realises he’s on his feet when the sound stops without warning.

He glances at the faces around the table, identical expressions of bewilderment.

“Excuse me,” he says, “I have something I need to do. Send for General Iroh if you need me, he will take my place.”

He leaves the room with as much grace as he can. Each step feels agonisingly slow; every thought in his head and beat of his heart is a scream for him to run, run, go faster, _be brave._

His stomach yowls once he’s out of the council chambers and picking up the pace, so he decides to sacrifice a few minutes in the kitchens. The cooks give him strange looks of concern as he rushes through the fastest breakfast of his life. It’s mostly leftovers from earlier - fresh but no longer warm bread, the remains of this morning’s purple berry jam, the fruit juice no one else wanted - but he shovels it all into his mouth, barely tasting it. 

He runs right into Katara on his way out the door, nearly toppling her to the floor. He grabs her by the arm to keep her up. Once she’s stable again, he heaves a sigh of relief; if Katara’s still here, so is Sokka.

“Zuko,” she breathes, “what are you doing here?”

“I got pulled into an early meeting,” he says. “I didn’t get breakfast. I just wanted to grab something before -”

Before what? He doesn’t know. He’s not sure what he’s racing towards. He figures he’ll know it when he gets there, like his uncle said.

Katara seems to know, though, because she says, “I’m just here to get a couple of recipes, but Sokka’s - he’s still loading up the last of his stuff. But if you’re going to say goodbye, I think you should go now. If you want to do it right.”

Adrenaline shoots through him, and he tries to make a run for it again, but Katara stops him.

“He went to see you last night,” she says, and her pleading eyes shine with trust.

“He - what?”

“He went to see you,” she repeats, “and you weren’t there.”

This is it, he thinks. This is the time coming, and his uncle was right. He knows.

“I have to go,” Zuko says, and she lets him.

The palace has never seemed bigger than it does now. He’s running, his lungs burning with the effort, and the hallways just keep getting longer. It’s impossible, he knows, but it happens anyway. Today is a day for impossibilities.

He slides around a corner, nearly trips, and there it is: the wide-open front entrance to the palace - and on the other side of the threshold, a handful of palace staff carrying the last of the luggage trunks between them. He can see the ship at the docks in the distance, a great metal monster bobbing on the perfect blue water. 

He slows to a jog, figuring that as long as he’s faster than the luggage, he’s safe. It’s hard to believe that there’s still anything to pack.

The path to the docks is a clear shot, and once he’s on his way down it, the docks seem to move closer to meet him. 

Once he gets close enough to make out faces, Zuko hears Katara's voice in his head, telling him to _take action._

He decides now might be the time to finally listen.

Sokka is just reaching the top of the gangplank, a lumpy bag hefted onto his shoulder. He hands it off to a guard on the main deck, who gives an affirmative gesture to someone Zuko can't see, and even though he knows they won’t leave without Katara, panic rises in Zuko like nothing he's felt before. Another guard reaches for the ropes and -

Zuko yells, "Stop!" and breaks into a sprint. In the time it takes for Sokka to turn and look at him, Zuko makes it all the way to the gangplank, bracing himself on the shaky rope supports.

“Zuko?” Sokka says, sounding the same kind of breathless Zuko feels. “What are you - did you _run_ here?”

Zuko stomps the last few steps, and Sokka offers him a hand up onto the deck. Zuko takes it, holds it like a lifeline, and doesn’t let it drop. They’re face to face now, closer than they need to be, and Zuko’s breath is starting to even out.

“I couldn’t let you go,” he says. “Not without -”

Something strange happens to Sokka’s face. It twists into something Zuko has never seen before, like he knows what’s happening but doesn’t believe it. 

“I was never going to leave without saying goodbye, Zuko,” he says, and maybe he’s a different kind of breathless now.

“ _No,_ that’s not what I mean,” Zuko urges, and he doesn’t need to be told anymore. He is brave.

Sokka squeezes his hand, and Zuko kisses him.

It’s short and gentle, and Zuko pulls away after only a second. Sokka twines their fingers together and chases him.

The world goes quiet. There is nothing but this moment of Sokka’s lips, Sokka’s skin, Sokka’s breath. 

Zuko’s free hand comes up to cradle Sokka’s jaw. Sokka kisses him soft and sweet and good, and it sends a jolt of something through Zuko that comes out with a gasp, and then Sokka kisses him harder and hungrier and better, crowding him against the guard rail of the deck.

Sokka, flush against him, pulls away to catch his breath. His chest is heaving and he drops Zuko’s hand to hold him by the hips as he says, “Come with me.”

Zuko stares at him, spellbound. “What?”

“Come with me.” He moves one hand from Zuko’s hip to move a lock of hair out of Zuko’s eyes.

Zuko turns to goo, suddenly thankful for the metal digging into his back.

“Come with me,” Sokka says again, “and I’ll show you the stars.”

He tells himself he can't go. He tells himself he can’t leave things like this. He tells himself there’s too much to do, too much on the line, too much that could go wrong.

He tells Sokka, “Yes,” and Sokka kisses him again. 

And again. 

And again.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://goldrushzukka.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/carlyraejervis?s=09/)
> 
> im writing a sequel to this fic for the zukka big bang!!! posting starts in febraury 2021 so it'll be a while, but watch this space!!!! theres more on the way!!!!!! i occasionally livetweet my writing process, so if you're into that pop over to my twitter :)


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